


Free Will

by yeahschool



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Chuck as God, Ghosts, High!Castiel, Hunting, M/M, Marijuana, Memory Loss, Not your average AU, Recreational Drug Use, Rimming, Uncomfortable sex scene, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:25:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeahschool/pseuds/yeahschool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which God, cruel and capricious as he is, gives his most favored children one chance at fulfillment after suffering enough for a thousand lifetimes. In a timeline which never was, never should have been, Castiel and his brothers experience birth, love, pain, free will, and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Chuck Shurley sat before his computer, a bottle of aged whiskey on his left side and an ash tray with a burning cigarette propped into it on his right. It had been a long time since he’d gotten any real writing done – after Dean and Sam had managed to thwart the apocalypse, he pulled out for a while. Getting directly involved with the tangle of his creation’s lives was psychologically exhausting for him, and after he’d finished guiding things along and making sure that free will was dutifully preserved, he left. Chuck never really _went_ anywhere, because that would imply that the place he went to existed prior to his arrival, but instead he traveled to the space between the multiverse and the antiverse and settled down for some serious R and R.

The planet he settled on wasn’t so much a planet as it was a cold, dense rock, but after a few minutes, he shaped it into something liveable. After he’d set up the rudimentary basics – an atmosphere, a few laws of physics, he built a house. There were many planets like these that he’d visited and left over time, utterly lifeless except in the memory of his presence. Empty homes, empty whiskey bottles, lingerie from the girls he’d fashioned to keep him company, and books, always books. He’d always been one for a good story, and somehow there was something grounding about writing things down. Although there are very few creatures who’ve been alive as long as he, when one does, you find it hard to keep track of things.

Out here, anything worked if he wanted it to work, so when he plugged in his aged desktop computer, he had no trouble checking his email and facebook accounts before he begrudgingly opened up his MS Word document. It wasn’t often that Chuck questioned his own judgment, but lately, a very strange cocktail of emotions had overtaken him: guilt, regret, mourning, and worst of all, self doubt. Gabriel and Raphael were dead, and Lucifer and Michael were trapped endlessly in hell – it was a strange thing, to know you’d never see any of your children again. That was the nature of his godliness, to be a creator meant to observe the beginning and ending of all things, but it still… burned in the pit of his gut. Low and wrong. A parent wasn’t supposed to watch their child die, and yet Chuck had seen the deaths of so many of his children, over and over.

He thought of Castiel. His favorite, always his favorite since the morning star was cast down – he’d finally come to realize he’d overreacted slightly, but it was too late for apologies and setting things right. In this time, at least. Even for someone all powerful and omniscient, there are some things that once done can never be undone. The thought stirred painfully in his chest.

Chuck stared at the blank document, the vertical line blinking accusingly at him, daring him to make a decision. That’s what writing is, really – creation at its finest, its most literal. To write something, to commit to a sentence, is to commit to a universe all one’s own. He frowned, opening the bottle of whiskey and pouring himself a liberal amount, slightly wet and wonderfully square icecubes forming in the glass to keep the drink cool and clinking. The sound of slowly melting ice sliding around in a whiskey glass was one of the most oddly satisfying sounds, and he raised it to his lips, draining the contents and letting it settle familiarly in his stomach. He was ready. They deserved this – all five of them, his most beloved. Just this once. Reality was not a literal thing, there were millions of realities and possible futures stacked on top of one another, and he was God. If he could not do this for his most devoted children, just once, what was he?

He refilled his glass and the sounds of his typing filled the empty house, on this empty planet, in the space between spaces.

_She was the fifth woman he visited. Her name was Amelia, and she carried herself with ethereal grace reserved almost exclusively for true servants of the Lord. At night, she read her bible; on Sundays, she sat at the pews, head bowed in respect and begging him for forgiveness for her sins, and on this day, a Thursday, he came to her. He came to her with a smile, eyes a little bloodshot, spine creaking from spending night after night awake at his computer, and she loved him unconditionally and unfamiliarly._

_“Can I help you, sir?”_

_Half a screen of glass separated them, and she sat up so straight in her professional clothing, surrounded by important looking documents and a computer which ran at top speed because it was only used for banking. Never did she log on to virus ridden websites, or sneak a peak at her personal email for emails from her husband; she pursued her career with the same unconditional devotion as she did her faith. This is why he has chosen her. Saint Amelia._

_“Yes. He will come in nine months, and you will call him Castiel. Take good care of him, for he is beloved.”_


	2. Accepted

Castiel Novak had never felt normal. There were normal problems people had – being harassed in social environments, feeling like an outsider, the moral implications of whatever their vices were, money problems, romantic issues – and those, he understood just fine. But saying he felt like an outsider was an understatement. It wasn’t that he couldn’t make friends; he was fair looking and had a decent personality, and while he’d always been fairly reserved, it wasn’t so crippling that he was socially inept. No, it was nothing so simple – Castiel felt _out of place_. The only way he could describe it in a way people understood was that he felt like he was born in the wrong time. He had no idea what the _right time_ was exactly, but every now and then, when he’d wake up and slip the lunch his mother had packed for him into his backpack, he’d be overwhelmed with the sensation that he was wasting time. That he needed to be somewhere else, desperately, like he’d forgotten something of the utmost importance. But these sensations were always fleeting, and he shook them off, going about his day to day life as God intended.

His life, which was changing rapidly with each moment he flew down the interstate, all of his possessions filling every inch of his 1998 Honda accord. It was an old car, and its body was covered in tiny dents from when a particularly bad hailstorm had assaulted his hometown during high school, but it being a Honda meant that it was reliable, and would probably last him another ten years if he kept it well serviced. That was good, because he intended to spend at least the next four to seven years in higher education, and even with his mother’s financial support, he wouldn’t have the money to buy a replacement if the Honda died on him. So, he’d taken it down to the autoshop a couple of days ago, just to make sure that it was still in working order, and now he was on the highway doing a respectable 70 towards UK.

University of Kansas really wasn’t his top choice – or even his top 10 choices – but he and his mother had grown up in the small town of Destiny, Kansas and while she wanted him to pursue higher education, she hated the idea of him running off somewhere too far away. Castiel had argued back that transferring schools weakened his chances for getting a full ride at his actual choice school, but she wouldn’t budge, so he conceded to go to UK for a year (to make sure he was adjusted to college and adult life, his mother had argued) before he ran off to one of his more choice schools. So, UK it had been.

He and his mother had visited the school a little over a year ago. It was nice. Lawrence was nice. Castiel didn’t quite understand himself, but being there had given him a renewed sense of purpose, fought back those strange, occasional feelings of desperation that clouded his judgment. Like he was trying to remember a dream. His mother liked Lawrence too, mostly because it wasn’t a city at all – it was a college town, and it being a college town, she reasoned there wasn’t a whole lot of trouble he could get into. The reality was that the less there is to do in a college town, the more hedonism its students practiced, but Castiel wasn’t fool enough to bring that up, especially since there was something so relaxing about the place. After visiting the art department, he found himself essentially sold, and several weeks later he received letters of admission and letters from the scholarship department, saying due to his academic excellence in high school that he’d be receiving a sizeable financial aid package that would essentially pay him to go to school.

That had been something of a relief. Amelia and Castiel Novak had lived comfortably, but it was still a single parent household, and while she’d had enough to support him, feed him, give him anything he wanted, he knew that she couldn’t foot the bill on this sort of thing. It was one of the reasons he’d worked so hard in high school.

She wasn’t here today, the day he moved out, because she was working a double at the bank. The only disappointment in that was how lonely the drive was; Destiny sat on almost the farthest corner of Kansas away from Lawrence, and the drive was hardly scenic. But he didn’t resent her otherwise, there had been a lot of start up costs, and since the excess of his scholarship wouldn’t hit his bank until the official first day of school, those start up costs had come out of her wallet. He’d assured her he’d pay her back – the landlord of his new apartment had wanted a deposit plus first and last month’s rent, not to mention all of the furniture and necessities he needed for the place, but she’d simply smiled in a slightly pained sort of way and told him this is what mothers did for their children. They helped. The only reason he was living in an apartment at all (instead of a dorm) was that the apartments near campus were actually quite a bit cheaper than the student dormitories, not to mention infinitely larger and more private. So she’d swung for that, paying his start up costs, and in return he’d promised to stay here a year and really try to like it. And if he didn’t like it, once his lease and the school year was up, he’d pack up everything he owned and head Northeast.

Hunter College in New York had seemed like a decent place to start.

His GPS took him off the interstate and onto a main road, packed full of restaurants, bars, and shopping centers, through a very nice neighborhood that screamed the sort of suburban comforts he was leaving, off down past a set of train tracks and through a rough looking area to Castiel’s new apartment. He’d made this trip last week to sort out everything with his landlord, get all the payments in, and get his key. He’d also taken that weekend to go up to various thrift stores to find salvageable furniture, and whatever he couldn’t find there, his mother had taken him to a real furniture store for. Happy to stretch his legs, he stood up and stretched in the parking lot before keying himself in the apartment, the smell of stale air from its uninhabitance over the past week greeting him as he walked in.

It wasn’t the nicest place he’d ever live in, but it was his. The larger bedroom upstairs already had his bed in its center, while the other, considerably smaller one – the real estate lady had said it was a child’s bedroom – would soon be full of art supplies, functioning as his studio. It was a better place than most kids got right after they moved out, and his scholarship overage would pay rent and give him enough, money to live on. If it ever became too strained, he could always get himself a job, but he was hoping it wouldn’t come to that – he was at school to learn, not to wait tables.

After a brief rest on his new couch (Mother wouldn’t let him thrift one because she was afraid of urine and God knows what else seeped into the cushions), he unpacked the contents of his car. Castiel wasn’t exactly known for his prowess in interior decoration, but the place didn’t look like a frat house by the time he was done unpacking – it was tasteful. His paintings covered the walls of his living area, paintings from high school he was mildly ashamed of on principle, but hopefully he’d replace them with better work over the course of the semester.

After a bowl of instant noodles for dinner, he slept.

* * *

 

Your first day at college and your first day at high school are wildly different, he learned that morning. Castiel had enrolled himself in five classes for the semester -  a pretty typical courseload – them being Art Concepts and Practice (the description for the class was vague, but it was a requirement for the major), Drawing I, Painting I, English 1010, and Intro to Biology. He had a certain number of non-art courses he was required to take, but he wasn’t going to have to stumble through another advanced math class ever again – KU didn’t require students pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts to take any math as part of their general education. It wasn’t that Castiel was bad at math, quite the contrary, he just didn’t like it. It was the opposite of artwork in almost every way, and since he wasn’t a sculpture student, he didn’t have much use for it apart from very basic algebra and geometry when building his own canvases.

His first day at college had been strange. His 8AM Drawing class had let him out after fifteen minutes, with an expensive looking supply list and three hours to kill until he had to be to his next class. So he’d pocketed his syllabus and just explored the campus, familiarizing himself with the main library and the locations of various eateries. Castiel had always been the type that could eat and eat and eat and it’d never show on his wirey frame, and he had a tendency to do just that. After a brief stint with veganism in high school (he’d been trying to impress a girl, back when that was something he did) he’d relapsed into eating red meat so terribly he’d probably put down 30 burgers in a matter of days. Since then, he’d learned not to deprive himself if he wanted to be happy, and judging from the variety of different places to eat here, he’d find a way to be content.

After he got himself breakfast, he resumed exploring, admiring all of the public art installed by past students around campus, including a rather attractive mural that sat on the side of the engineering building. It wasn’t that old, he could tell by the integrity of the paint, and yet there was a flatteringly aged quality about it that seemed to settle just right in his stomach.

Though he didn’t intend to spend much time there, he dropped by the rec center as well. His student ID got him in free, any time, twenty four hours a day, and as he surveyed the many men and women sweating on the various equipment, he doubted that was a chunk of his student activity’s fee he’d ever bother spending. Still, he walked around, trying not to acknowledge how out of placed he looked in his press slacks and his dress shirt tucked under his belt. Physical fitness was always one of those things Castiel said he would get into every January 1st, and by January 30th he’d have suspended his gym membership and would be back to long hours in front of his easel instead. He appreciated fitness in theory, but he’d never enjoyed playing outside the way his peers did, and he just hoped that between all of the paint-thinner, various ceramic glaze chemicals, and all those cheeseburgers that he wasn’t daring god to strike him down for his hubris. He laughed inwardly at his own joke, realizing he’d been standing in front of the window to the weight room and _staring_ at a guy for probably ten minutes, before he started and turned on his heel towards the pool. At least the guy hadn’t seen him, Castiel looked very… intense when he was lost in thought.

The indoor pool was empty, unsurprisingly. All of the students taking competitive swimming courses wouldn’t have had their supplies on the first day, but the water still rocked as if it had received recent activity. The humidity of the room kept him from staying inside for very long, and he turned on his heels, looking appreciatively at the hot tub for a moment (perhaps this place wasn’t so bad) and nearly walking into a sweaty young man who’d been right behind him.

“Woah-! Where’s the fire, man?”

Castiel stared. It was the man he’d been staring at, of course it was. Social norms would tell him to cast his eyes down guilty, but Castiel has never really been like anyone else, so he just stared right back at him and says “Being the indoor pool, this is the last place I’d be fleeing from a fire from.”

The guy stared at him for a second then laughed, a little uncomfortably, but the tension in his shoulders that revealed his true discomfort seemed to relax slightly. “Yeah, uh, yeah. You’re right.”

They stood in silence for a moment, which seemed to make Castiel’s company uncomfortable, because he coughed and averted his eyes. “So, uh, are you in weight class or something? You looked lost and coach said you were watching for a while.” Castiel didn’t open his mouth to say anything immediately, and apparently his company was the type who liked his conversations to run faster than trains, because he kept babbling “-cuz if you are, man, that’s totally cool, you should come join us. Coach is really nice, he won’t be too much of a dick to you for being late. I mean you are like an hour late, but hey, you’re a freshman right? Freshmen get a free pass to everything their first week, so it’s cool. So…yeah.”

Well, he was certainly friendly, Castiel would give him that. He shook his head, once the stranger stopped speaking. “I’m sorry, I’m not in your class. It was very polite of you to come fetch me, but I was just touring the rec center. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I wasn’t really… staring at you. It’s just early in the morning and I’m not entirely awake yet.”

It was the longest sentence he’d strung together since yesterday. Perhaps moving and being new had left him a little dry for social interaction, despite being surrounded by students his age.

“Oh, uh, right. Well, this is awkward. I’ll just… go. It was nice meeting you!”

The young man jogged off, and Castiel nodded towards his back, pondering for a moment if it was _indeed_ nice meeting him. He decided it had been. After he surveyed a few of the courts, he left the rec center and headed back to the main campus to do a bit more exploring.

When the time finally came, he pulled a map out of his back pocket and directed himself to the natural sciences building. It was old, and while it couldn’t have been much larger than six floors, its age and the grandness of the architecture made it look massive. His classroom wasn’t hard to find – being a 1010 class and one of the many possible classes you could take to satisfy a science requirement, Intro to Biology was in the large lecture hall on the first floor. In high school, his teachers had told him that sitting in the front was a way to prove your sincerity as a student, but the lecture hall was packed, and the first _ten_ rows were already full with people elbow to elbow and laptop to laptop. That didn’t really bother him, he doubted there was any validity to that teachers-care-where-you-sit nonsense, so he took a seat in the middle, in a row only occupied by one other student who was resting her head against the concrete wall, completely asleep.

This was what he’d imagined college was like, based on all the movies he’d seen. A bustling lecture hall, everyone typing with one hand and sipping coffee with the other, a giant screen in the front and a podium for the professor to speak at. His Drawing I class had been in the basement of the art building, with no windows and only one door, and because they’d apparently lost most of the chairs for that room, everyone had sat on the floor in a circle and introduced themselves. No, this was what college was supposed to be, wasn’t it? He pulled his laptop out of his backpack, frowning that it was so much bigger than the… plate, it appeared, he’d been allotted to use as a desk. But just as he was setting it down, he had to pull it right back into his lap and flatten himself to his seat, looking up to the apologetic smile of the guy from the rec center.

“Oh, uh, hey! You!” The student flattened himself as he walked past him, trying to avoid touching him as social norms dictated. “Er, do you remember me? I know you meet a lot of new people during your first day, but--”

Against his better judgment, Castiel interrupted him. “Yes, I remember.” But the stranger didn’t seem offended, just smiling in a way that went straight up to his eyes. It was so genuine it was disarming.

“Well, my name’s Dean. This is Bio, right?”

He nodded. “Yes. My name is Castiel. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He wasn’t sure if the look of bewilderment in Dean’s eyes was because of his name or the stiff formality in which he introduced himself. “Castiel. Can you spell that? I, uh, I’m kind of a visual learner and I’d hate to run into you again and go through that awkward dance of me pretending I know your name but I don’t.”

Well, Dean was certainly forward. And talkative. He decided he liked that, so he blew up the font on his already open word document for notes and typed

**CASTIEL**

“Is that like, French? Or?”

“I’m not sure. My mother always told me she named me Castiel because it was God’s will, but…” He laughed awkwardly, but Dean seemed completely enthralled, just staring at him like he was the only person in the world. Was this how he looked at people? No wonder it made everyone back in Destiny a little uncomfortable, Castiel found himself shifting away from him unconsciously.

“But?”

“Well. You know. _God’s will_ , and all of that. It never seemed like a straight answer to me.”

Dean frowned a little at that. “So what, are you like, atheist, or?”

“No!” Castiel said that a little too loudly. Something about the idea repulsed him. “No, no, of course not. Castiel is an obscure angel mentioned in the bible only a few times. He’s… sort of like Thor, I suppose.” Dean laughed a little at that, no doubt images of the recent movie adaptation flooding his mind, or worse, the absurdity of the comics. “I mean, he was the angel of Thursday. And since it’s been a while since people prayed to gods of days, he’s… well, he’s obscure. I wasn’t even born on a Thursday. So, I’m not sure where she got it.”

Dean nodded. “That’s… actually, really cool, man. Hey, what’s your major? Maybe we’ll have some more classes together.”

“Fine arts.”

“Oh.” A mixture of emotions crossed Dean’s face, and Castiel couldn’t guess what any of them were. “Guess not, then. I’m in engineering, so I probably won’t see you around much past this semester.”

The professor arrived then, and Castiel straightened up, settling his hands on his keyboard as she began to speak 

* * *

 

After class, Dean had given him a smile and said “See you next Wednesday.” before heading off to do whatever engineers did. Something about the idea of him being an engineering major seemed preposterous to him – Dean was so… well. He was good looking. He went to the gym. He’d smelled like old spice and was still damp from his post-workout shower when he’d sat next to him, and engineering majors didn’t work out. They were all out of shape and had no social skills. Castiel berated himself inwardly for thinking so narrow mindedly, heading for his last class of the day as the summer heat bore down on his back. It’d been cool and overcast this morning, so he’d worn his trenchcoat, but he shedded it and stuffed it into his bag next to his sketchbook and laptop as he powerwalked across campus to the English building.

Part of him felt oddly disappointed when Dean wasn’t there. He hadn’t realized he’d been hoping for it on some level until the disappointment swelled in his chest and once again, he was in a room full of strangers. But it was alright, he probably wouldn’t be here for long, so he slid into a seat in the front and pulled out his computer.

* * *

The next day, he found he liked his Tuesday/Thursday schedule much more than his Monday/Wednesday. His Art Practices class was sort of a hodgepodge of seemingly unrealated assignments, but his professor had assured them that by the end of the semester, even if they weren’t  better artists, they would be better art students. Better at giving and receiving criticism, better at relating work to work done by famous artists in the past, better at talking about their own work. The idea of spending a lot of time talking about his work unnerved him a little, since he didn’t really know what to say, but at the same time he hoped his professor could keep his end up. Those were skills he needed, even wanted on some level, and after they’d been given their syllabus, they spent the rest of the period just talking about favorite artists and brainstorming ideas for their first assignment.

His second class was Oil Painting, the class he’d really been looking forward to. His professor was a thin, wild looking woman, with thick glasses covering her wide, eccentric eyes. Her enthusiasm was both draining and exciting as she went through the syllabus and then showed them a slideshow of artists who specialized in still life. As with all the classes he’d taken yesterday, however, it ended before they could do anything, so with all of his supply lists in hand and his refunded scholarship money making his bank account full for the first time in years, he decided it was time to do some shopping.

The art supply store that all of his professors had recommended he shop at was characteristically expensive, but not so much so that he couldn’t afford his supplies. The bill had rung up over $400, but he swallowed the pain that such a large expense caused him and surrendered his debit card. Arms full of paint, brushes, canvases, various knives and papers, and lots of new pencils, he headed to the grocery store.

 Although he’d picked up a few necessities when he first moved in (coffee, a frozen pizza, some ramen), his fridge was deeply lacking. Castiel had never bought groceries before. His mother had always prided herself in her frugalness, and every Sunday morning after church she would clip coupons while he made brunch. Sunday had always been their day, and his heart ached a little imagining her clipping her coupons without the sound of him struggling not to burn the French toast. Still, it was to happen eventually, every kid leaves home sometime. He hoped she’d start dating soon – for whatever reason, Amelia Novak had never moved on after his dad had left. Castiel frowned a bit in memory as he cruised down main street, looking for the nearest grocer. They’d been happily married a couple years before he was born, but for reasons his mother had never told him, Harry left four months into her pregnancy.

It was a cowardly thing to do. Even if Amelia had cheated on him, which was the only reason Castiel could imagine an otherwise happy, financially and psychologically stable husband would leave his pregnant wife, it… it was wrong. She had been pregnant. While Castiel had never been a woman, there had been a couple girls at his high school who were with child, and it was as physically debilitating as it was psychological. And yet, he just left her. Of course, the child support came in every month, and a few times a year Castiel got a card full of more money than he knew what to do with, but he hadn’t seen Harry since he was fourteen. He knew that if he ever had children, he would never leave them, not ever. If you loved someone, you should never hurt them, and that was the reason he took such care in ensuring that Amelia not regret keeping him. He loved her, and if he ever made anything out of his artwork, he would repay her for everything one day.

He pulled into a supermarket, nearly scratching the car parked next to him due to his absent thinking. That would have been just wonderful – having to call the cops his second day in a new town to report that he’s inept at parking. Doublechecking the hulking monster of a vehicle next to him once over to make sure he’d indeed avoided it (he had; the car was at least 40 years old and the owner must have taken some pride in ownership because the paintjob looked better than the one on his Honda), he headed inside.

Living in a single parent household meant that while Castiel didn’t know how to clean very well, or clip coupons, he did know how to cook. He and his mother had always unofficially divided certain duties; Castiel would vacuum anything she asked as long as she didn’t ask him to scrub the bathtub and toilets. Amelia would do the dishes so long as Castiel cooked, and if Amelia cooked, Castiel would be the one scooping food into the garbage disposal and hand washing everything. They’d had a dishwasher in the house with the yellow shutters for as long as he could remember, and for as long as he could remember, it leaked all over the floor if they used it. So they didn’t. Castiel had been pleasantly surprised when his landlord had told him that yes, the dishwasher in his tiny kitchen _did_ work, and so did the washer/dryer hookups if he decided to purchase or rent those. So the first time ever, he found himself putting dishwasher detergent in his grocery cart, along with a host of other things he wouldn’t have thought to buy. But he walked through the store slowly, getting everything he needed, usually the knockoff brand because really, how different could they be from the real thing?

He stopped next to a man in a leather jacket as he evaluated the chickens when he heard someone clear their throat.

It was him. Dean. _Again_.

Dean was smiling and then his lips were moving, adam’s apple was bobbing, and Castiel could tell that meant he was talking. He could even sort of hear a dull roar, which were probably words, and it was only once the roar stopped and Dean was looking at him like he was missing a few screws that Castiel paused and said

“What?”

Dean laughed. This, Castiel heard. “I said, isn’t it supposed to be fate when you run into someone you’ve never met before three times in one day?”

He supposed he’d heard that before, maybe in a movie. “I don’t think so. I mean. This is a college town. And we’re both.” He paused, blinking stupidly. “In college.” He hadn’t felt this socially awkward since middle school. “Not to mention today is Tuesday, and I saw you twice yesterday.”

Dean blinked a few times and laughed, scratching the back of his neck. His leather jacket permeated a scent that, even standing at arm’s length from him, Castiel could smell. It wasn’t bad. It was… aged. Whiskey, pipe tobacco, old leather. It sort of smelled like Mr. Henley, Destiny’s most poorly adjusted alcoholic, but… better. Mr. Henley had the tendency to smell like bodily fluids as well, but Dean’s jacket didn’t. It was sort of nice. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. First week of class and all, I’m totally out of it. You’re Castiel, right? C-A-S-T-I-E-L?”

He nodded. “And you’re Dean. D-E-A-N.”

“Right-o. So.” Dean looked him over, and again, there was a mix of emotions that crossed over his face. Castiel wondered if he was trying to figure out how to un-acknowledge him, how to say goodbye in a grocery store when there was a strong chance they would run into each other again, and have to awkwardly say again ‘yes, hello, you’re still here buying groceries as am I. What a conundrum!’ But he didn’t. “Listen. I know I don’t know you really well, and you can stop me if you feel like you’re being sexually harassed or if I’m being too friendly or whatever, but I’m having a start-of-school party this Friday and you seem cool.” Castiel blinked at him, and because he didn’t respond in 0.5 seconds, Dean responded by just talking faster. “I mean, not all my friends are nerds. There will be some cool people. And some chicks. Even a few art chicks. And my kid-brother won’t be there, and we’ll have booze, so it should be fun. And if it’s lame you can always just leave, I mean, do you have a car? Because if you don’t and you’re bored I can just take you home, I wouldn’t be offended or anything.”

“Okay.”

Castiel didn’t know why he said yes. He’d blanched several times in this little speech, first at _sexually harassed_ , then at _art chicks_ , then again at _kid brother_ because if Dean was worried about the presence of his brother, then he’d probably be worrying about his parents too. But he said yes, and he’d rationalize it later by saying that it was all a part of the college experience, and that he needed social interaction and perhaps a little experience drinking, but in reality, he said yes because Dean was looking at him like he was the only person in the world. Like he actually cared if he showed up. And in looking at him that way, Castiel actually _looked_ back. Really looked. He saw green eyes with crow’s feet already beginning to tinge their corners, despite the fact that Dean couldn’t be older than 22. He saw freckles, he saw the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow, he saw a knick in his neck from where he’d shaved that morning, but more than that he saw something strangely genuine. And before he over-thought it, before his brain turned this innate trust he felt in Dean’s presence into distrust, he’d agreed.

Dean’s presence was calming the way being in Lawrence was calming. Like he’d been here before, or done this before… only not.

“Okay?” The other man echoed, somewhat disbelieving. “Okay. Okay cool. Yeah. I’ll see you there, Castiel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you have it. Prologue + first chapter of Free Will. I'm pretty bad with consistent updates, but I'll try to have one of these out every week. Probably frequent updates at first since I'm on a roll with it. This was sort of a way of channeling out my post-finals stress into something productive. Hope you enjoy (:


	3. Animal House

The rest of Castiel’s week was fairly uneventful. In both Drawing I and Painting I, there were still-lifes set up for him to interpret. The one the Drawing professor had set up was fairly imaginative – apart from the typical set up of vases and flowers, there was also a damaged skeleton that the medical school had donated, as well as several animal skulls and lots of textured fabrics. Unfortunately, the still life the painting professor had set up was perhaps one of the least stimulating things he’d ever had the displeasure of rendering. The very first assignment she’d given them was to paint the still life to the best of their ability, matching the local colors in the painting as well as they could to show her what level they were all on. It wasn’t hard, but due to the fact that any oil painting was a labor intensive process, it pained him to slave over getting the colors of various cups, shoes, and boxes just right. Some of the more forward students in the class had complained openly, something Castiel marveled at – he’d always had a strong respect for authority, and didn’t cause trouble. But a girl with almost no hair on her head and quite a bit of titanium in her face had just looked at the professor and said “Look, I know this is Painting I, but surely we can do better than _this_.”

His Art Practices class had given him a first assignment that had him stumped. His teacher, who exuded everything being an art professor meant by being 6’8”, thin as a rail, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of paisley pants, had given them all a copy of the local paper and told them to make art. Many of the students had taken that quite literally, beginning to tear up the paper to do paper mache, but Castiel had just calmly opened it up and began reading, looking for something that left an impression. Although the paper was a slow read (things always are when you’re looking for inspiration), he’d managed to find something of interest in the obituaries.

On Wednesday, Dean gave him the information for the party, as well as his phone number should Castiel get lost. Although he imagined it would be courteous to send the number a text to ensure it was right and by proxy give Dean _his_ number, Castiel never did. Yes, there was something calming about Dean’s presence, but the more he thought about it, the more that bothered him. They didn’t know each other, and yet he was just going to walk into this stranger’s house at 9:00pm (according to the piece of paper with all of the necessary details) and pretend he belonged there? It bothered him, probably more than it should. Still, he wasn’t going to back out – once you say you’re going to do something, you have to do it. It was a lesson all good people had to learn. A deal’s a deal and all of that.

Another part of him, and Castiel couldn’t tell if this was the more or less rational part of him, reasoned that there was no harm in going. Dean had reiterated that if Castiel didn’t enjoy himself, he could always just leave. And he had the chance to make friends, not just in the form of Dean but any of the other people who might be attending. Castiel had never been a social butterfly back in Destiny, but that was because he grew up there, knowing all the same people and knowing everyone’s secrets the way they knew his. When everyone you interact with on a daily basis knows everything about you without ever speaking to you, it drops the incentive to speak at all. But this was college! This was about trying new things, and he had assured his mother that he would _try_ to like Lawrence before he ran off to New York next year. Well, this would be him trying. And when it crashed and burned, Castiel could reasonably say that he had a good run, but he was off to better things. Things involving frequent visits to the MOMA and the MET.

He slept in until 11 on Friday, and made himself a real breakfast when he woke up, instead of simply toasting frozen waffles like he’d done the past four days in a row. Having no Friday classes was convenient on a number of levels, but he doubted after this week that he’d spend another Friday without anything to do – the amount of in-studio art homework he needed to do was overwhelming, and since the still lifes were at school and taking photos of the still lifes would compromise the light source, he’d have to go up to the art building if he had to do homework. It was a little disappointing – part of the reason he’d gotten the two bedroom was because he could have his own studio, but he was sure he’d get mileage out of it in some way or another.

After breakfast, he had a videochat with his mother, telling her about his week and assuring her that everything was fine. Tactfully, he avoided mentioning the party, not wanting images of Animal House filling her head as what he was doing with his college education. After they hung up, he spent a good portion of the afternoon cleaning and unpacking, something he really hadn’t had time to do since he’d moved in. The place really was alright. It was clean, it was tastefully decorated, and he’d even organized his kitchen the way his mother would have. But it was lonely. Living alone hadn’t been the comfort he’d expected – after an adolescence that involved trying to get any alone time that he could, the freedom he was eventually granted didn’t offer the reprieve he’d thought it would. Waking up to silence, never hearing the sound of his mother cooking up breakfast or wishing her a good night before he went to bed was… strange.

Maybe he’d get a cat to keep him company. Even in his loneliness, a cat sounded better than a roommate.

Around 7:30, he took a shower and shaved. He was still too young to buy alcohol, so it wasn’t as if he could bring a bottle of wine to the party with him, as was customary. Granted, in movies, no one ever brought the host of wild college parties anything – they just drank and usually fornicated in the host’s parents’ bed. Which seemed awfully rude, but since Castiel had never been drunk before, he couldn’t comment on whether or not it was proper. Dean had mentioned there would be booze, quite a bit from his tone, and Castiel knew that if he drank his way into a stupor when he got there, he wouldn’t be able to leave, regardless of his comfort level. Part of him wanted to say that he shouldn’t drink at all, but he knew he wasn’t going to do that. He was in college, and this was what college kids did. They drank, they did drugs, they had casual sex, and while Castiel didn’t believe in premarital sex, the bible wasn’t wholly clear on its policy on experimental drug use.

He left at 9:30, not wanting to look overly eager by arriving on time, and the only reason he knew _that_ social norm when he ignored so many others is that he’d been given a very stern talking to about it back in high school by a friend. It felt wrong, not bringing a gift, but as he pulled up to the house, which seemed to thrum as muffled classic rock seeped through its insulation, he thought it might be forgiveable. None of the twenty-somethings heading into the house seemed to be bringing gifts, just talking animatedly and entering the house without so much as the preamble of knocking. There were cars everywhere; parked in the street, in the driveway, across the street, and even one parked on the front lawn. The home itself surprised Castiel a bit. He didn’t know why, but he hadn’t expected Dean to live somewhere so nice. It was a respectable neighborhood, the sort where every family on the block has 2.5 children, the kind of place **he** grew up in. Of course, he and his mother never lived in a house quite this _big_ , but still. Some part of him had imagined Dean was living in a tiny apartment on the other side of the tracks, the way he was.

Following suit with the other guests, he didn’t knock, just letting himself in and taking a cursory glance around. It was a den of inequity, and Dean wasn’t kidding. There were chicks. _Everywhere_. It wouldn’t have been of import to him had they been in less compromising positions, but they were all young, fit, beautiful, and drinking. In fact, everyone was drinking. Castiel had never seen this much alcohol in his _life_. On the floor, a circle of people were sitting around a deck of cards that had been fanned out in a circle, and each time they drew one, at least one person drank. In a typical draw, he observed, it was more like three or four. Not far from them were a couple of people playing beer pong. Castiel wasn’t clear on how the game worked, but both participants seemed to be winning due to the fact that neither were standing without difficulty.

He hugged the walls to avoid bumping into people as he made his way into the next room, a dining room from what it looked like, where a spread of all different kinds of junk food laid out appealingly. At the end of the table was thirty or so plastic cups of beer, twenty shot glasses (about half of them full of clear liquid and half of them full of brown), and several partially dented vodka and whiskey bottles. People were yelling over the music, which he didn’t recognize by name but the song was familiar to him on some level, and some were dancing or pumping beer out of a keg in the corner of the room. Doubt creeped up on him supernaturally – yes, the bible wasn’t specific about drug use, but this… this seemed wrong. This was hedonism on a dangerous level, and words like _alcohol poisoning_ and _drowning in your own vomit_ were making an ugly appearance in his mind.

He sidestepped a couple who were intimately involved with one another and headed into the kitchen, which had less people in it but smelled distinctly of marijuana. He’d become familiar with the smell in high school, after his mother had permitted him to go to a music festival with several of his friends. Upon further inspection, he found a small bong and a couple of pipes sitting near the open window, the contents of their bowls ashed from being smoked and quite a few black ashes dumped in the kitchen sink. Somehow, that seemed distinctly less threatening to him than all the beer, but he ran the water to wash it down the drain regardless. It was unsightly. Through the window, he could see people chasing each other outside, as well as quite a few people sitting around a firepit and smoking. He figured that if Dean wasn’t out there, he was going to leave; he didn’t know anyone here, hell, he didn’t even _recognize_ anyone here, and he wasn’t going to stay and get drunk with a bunch of strangers. Yes, there was a certain amount of experimentation that should be done in college, but this? This was a bit too much for a man who’d been to church almost every Sunday of his life.

He stepped out through the back door and looked around, sighing in relief when he recognized Dean’s face glowing by the firelight. There was a beer in his hand and a girl on either side of him, but Castiel strode forward and dragged one of the iron outdoor chairs towards the firepit, sitting down in front of him and acknowledging him with a nod.

“Dean.”

“Castiel!” Dean smiled, and that wave of calmness swept over him again. Familiar and yet not. “Hey, I’m glad you came. I didn’t think you would.”

“Well. I did say I would come.” Even to his own ears, he sounded stiff and clipped. He relaxed his shoulders a little. “I didn’t realize so many people would be here. Are these all your friends?”

Everyone around the firepit laughed, and Castiel frowned a little bit. “No, no. Uhh.. I maybe know like, twenty people here? A lot of people plus-one’d. Or two’d, or three’d. But hey, I’m always up to meet new people. Can I get you a drink?”

“Sure.”

Dean rose to his feet, disentangling himself from the women who had snaked their arms around him, or their ankles, or _something_  - Castiel hadn’t really been looking at them, and Dean wasn’t acknowledging them either. Not anymore. The moment Dean was out of his sight, rationality took over again. Wasn’t it  a bad idea to drink alcohol around an open fire? Wasn’t it a bad idea to allow complete _strangers_ into your home, who could damage or steal your valuables? Shouldn’t he turn down that music before the police show up on a noise violation? Not everyone, including him, were 21 and up, so then it’d be an underage drinking violation as well. And of course, there was the marijuana too – he wasn’t sure if Dean was supplying that or not, but even if he wasn’t, he’d probably get blamed for it. Suddenly, Castiel felt stupid for staying. Every red flag he’d been taught in Drug Resistance and Peer Pressure Resistance programs were going off, and yet he was just sitting here, trying to rationalize it because he was a college boy now.

He was working up the courage to just get up and leave when Dean returned with a cup of what looked, and smelled, like orange juice. Going against the rambled, internal monologue he’d just fought through, he wordlessly took a sip, and underneath the juice he could taste something like nail polish remover. He suspected it was vodka.

“So. You mentioned you’re an art major. What’s that like? I can’t even draw a stick figure.”

One of the girl’s had swapped her seat with Dean’s and was chatting animatedly to the other, and Dean just stared at him, sipping his beer and smiling and Castiel felt _secure_. Familiarity. God, that word didn’t even describe it, it was like the worst case of dejavu he’d ever had, but not of this moment. It was like he’d met Dean before, under wildly different circumstances. He racked his brain, thinking of boy scouts, art camp, elementary school, middle school, _anything_ that explained this feeling, but he came up frustratingly empty. Every time. It was like trying to remember a dream, the harder he grappled for it, the faster it pulled away. He sighed, taking a large swig of his drink. “It’s harder than most people think.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Everyone thinks studying art would be easy. We don’t write many papers, we don’t take many tests. UK doesn’t even have a math requirement if you’re seeking your BFA. But we have to work a lot harder than academic majors.” Dean raised an eyebrow at this, not in doubt but in curiosity, so Castiel kept going. “A normal class is 3 credit hours, so you go to that class three hours a week. Naturally. But art classes are double that. We get three credit hours for six class hours, not to mention the homework load is a about as many hours, per class, as we are in class. Usually more. Additionally, it’s hard for art majors to achieve a 4.0 because many of our professors don’t give As, as an A implies perfection and the argument can be made that no art is perfect. Not to mention that once you’re done with an assignment, you have to be critiqued on it by your class and your professor. At least with a paper, you can take your failures with a bit of dignity.”

Dean laughed, and it was genuine, and Castiel realized he enjoyed it. Making him laugh. He wasn’t particularly funny, and when he was, it was usually at his own expense.

“That’s actually genuinely interesting. I’m not gonna lie, I thought all art majors did was draw pictures and smoke pot all the time.”

“Well, no one said that wasn’t true.”

Dean laughed even harder than that, and Castiel smiled a little in self congratulation. “Yeah, well, that’s sort of what engineering majors do too. Instead of pictures it’s all circuits and calculus problems on $5 paper.”

“I can empathize with the paper. A sheet of Stonehenge costs $4 at the local supply store, and I needed 10.”

“Stonehenge?”

“Heavyweight paper. I believe we’ll be using it for watercolor and ink in my Drawing class at some point in the semester, but for now we’re using charcoal.”

“Huh.”

They lapsed into silence, and Castiel wasn’t sure if it was comfortable or not, so he drained his drink. He really couldn’t taste the vodka that much, the juice was much stronger, and he wondered if Dean had made it light on purpose. He couldn’t feel anything. As if on cue, Dean stood up and took the cup from him, tossing his beer bottle and saying something about getting them more drinks before disappearing back into the house. This time, Castiel didn’t immediately feel a wave of regret and doubt – in fact, he felt content. Dean was good to talk to, and he wasn’t doing that thing people who hosted parties often had to do – juggling friends they’d convinced to come and inevitably not paying anyone enough attention. When he returned, he gave Castiel a slightly stronger version of the same drink he’d made him, as well as a slice of pepperoni pizza, dropping back into his seat with a smile.

“So. You mentioned you had a brother, when we were at the supermarket?”

“Right, yeah!” Dean took a large bite of his pizza, chewing maybe once or twice before swallowing it whole with a swig of beer. “Sammy. He’s a good kid. Took a while but his balls finally dropped because he’s at a girl’s place for the weekend, which is the only reason I’m throwing this shindig. He pitches a fit like nothing you’ve ever seen if I play my guitar too loudly, let alone.” He gestured around, as if that explained everything.

“What’s that like, having a brother? I always wanted siblings.”

Dean rolled his eyes and laughed, sipping his beer. “Not as glamorous as TV makes it look, I’ll say that. But me and Sammy are really close, and even if he’s a bitch 99% of the time, it’s nice to have someone you can always depend on? Y’know?”

Castiel thought of his mother and nodded. “Yes. I know.”

“Aaanyway. He’s a good kid. Early acceptance to Stanford and everything, and we haven’t gotten a letter yet but I’m pretty sure he’s gonna score a full ride. _Why_ he wants to go all the way to California eludes me, but. Whatever. He’s strong willed, so he’ll either go to Stanford with my support or without it. Might as well go with it.” Dean paused, finishing his pizza and chasing it with his beer, and Castiel realized then he’d been so busy listening that he’d neither eaten nor drank anything Dean had brought him, so he set upon the task of doing both.

“Are your parents out for the weekend too?”

Dean’s face fell a little, but just a little, and he seemed to shake the falter in his smile away immediately. “Not exactly. My mom died of natural causes when I was pretty young, and then dad died last year. He left me the house, which was why I decided to go to school. Before that, all I had was GED and I was working at some autoshop, and I wasn’t really doing anything with myself. I mean, I loved working cars, but I did a lot of stupid shit. After my dad passed, I tried to straighten myself out and do something important. He was always real proud of Sammy, since the little nerd had a 4.0, so I tried to take after him. It’s not much, and hindsight’s 20/20, but I think the old man would have been proud.”

Castiel felt like he’d crossed into something too intimate just then, and he looked around, but both girls were gone, and the music was loud enough that from where they were sitting, anyone else outside probably couldn’t hear them. Still, it… felt wrong. They hadn’t known each other long enough for him to hear this, and yet part of him was totally unsurprised when Dean had declared them dead.

“So is that why you’re studying engineering? You’re interested in cars?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. My uncle, well, basically-my-uncle owns this autoshop and told me that’s what I should look into. I’m really interested in restoration. Like getting classic cars looking brand new and stuff. So I’m here, and I guess once I’m done I’ll try and start my own business. Since I don’t have to worry about rent or, starting next year, Sammy, I should be able to do that.”

Castiel nodded. He’d never really given much thought to cars, but classic cars had a certain timeless quality to them that he could appreciate. “That’s interesting, Dean.”

A couple of Dean’s friends joined them then, sitting around the firepit and holding the pipes Castiel had seen in the kitchen. One was rather small, orange with swirls of white bubbling through the glass, and the other was quite a bit larger, a lovely shade of cobalt that reminded him of Picasso’s blue period. Unlike before, the bowls were no longer full of dirty black ash but rather pungent smelling weed. He drained his cup, setting it down and taking a bite of his pizza. The two introduced themselves as Jack (music major), and Katherine (mechanical engineering), which surprised him a little more than it should have because Katherine was very pretty and wasn’t riddled with even half as much social awkwardness as Castiel had been carrying himself with lately.

“Have you ever smoked before?”

Castiel lied and nodded. He didn’t know _why_ he was lying – it’s not like Dean seemed to be the type that would tease him about it even if he hadn’t, but he was struck with the urge to impress him. Maybe the drinks were starting to take effect – he was beginning to feel a bit heady, a bit pleasantly warm. Dean grinned and said “Do you want to? I’m gonna take at least a couple hits but you don’t have to feel obligated.”

“Sure.”

* * *

 

An hour later, Castiel was high and drunk for the first time in his life, and he _loved_ it. It unnerved him a little how much he was enjoying this actually, he really _shouldn’t_ because to be overly self-indulgent was a sin, but as the waves of pleasure cruised through his body, halfway an orgasm, halfway a seizure, he was utterly content. He was also _seriously_ relaxed, chatty even, loosening up to Dean’s friends, and their numbers grew and grew the more he talked. They were staring at him, smiling wide and laughing when he said something particularly funny, but Castiel was so gone he really didn’t know what he was saying. He was so _gone_ he wasn’t even sure he _was_ speaking, because his thoughts seemed so loud that they could be words. Or were they? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t care.

After they’d smoked, there had been shots. Castiel hadn’t been interested in shots until he’d smoked three bowls, after which he was pretty sure he could do anything. So everyone around the pit had done one shot, then Dean had fetched another round, and then a girl whose breasts were very large had brought a third round, and by then Castiel was, as she’d put it, totally fucked up.

All through the night, Dean stayed close. He smoked, he drank, he caught Castiel and steered him upright if he was swaying a little too much. They talked about cars, art, music, film, and Castiel learned that Dean loved metal. Not metal as it was now, but according to him, “real” metal. Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Motorhead, 70s and 80s metal bands from “back when music was good”. Which was what had been playing most of the night, although every now and then someone would change it to dance music if those inside were in a particular mood. He learned that Dean loved action, sci-fi, horror, and hated dramas and chick flicks. Castiel probably could have guessed that; Dean’s tastes were hypermasculine, and apparently his brother was the sort that cried during Nicholas Spark movies and read Twilight. Castiel was _pretty_ sure Dean was exaggerating, but having never met Sam, he couldn’t be sure.

Dean learned a _lot_ from Castiel, mostly because he was babbling and answering any question with complete honesty. He learned Castiel was from a little boonie town and was raised in a religious single-parent household, and had a slightly Norman/Norma Bates thing going on with his mother. He learned Castiel was very intelligent, and if he hadn’t majored in art, probably would have majored in religious studies. He learned that he liked documentaries and independent films, the kind of weird shit Dean would _never_ watch, and he learned that Castiel knew virtually nothing about music. Destiny’s only source of music was Best Buy, where Castiel had only ever bought the censored album versions of whatever was popular. Dean had sworn to him that they would correct this, and Castiel had just nodded enthusiastically, staring at him like he was the only thing in the world. Dean learned that while Castiel knew nothing about music, he knew everything about books and art, and could babble about the incredible color relationships in a famous painting for thirty minutes before someone finally shut him up.

The party started to wind down around three AM, and people were starting to taper away, either heading home to pass out or heading out to clubs to continue partying. Castiel stayed in the wrought iron chair outside, next to the fire and next to Dean, too intoxicated to drive home even if he wanted to, and he didn’t. In the course of six hours, he ate his way through four slices of pizza, half a bag of cheese puffs, a handful of pizza rolls, six handfuls of chexmix, seven oreos, and oddly enough, a can of tomato soup. And he was content.

By four thirty, including himself and Dean, only ten people were still around, and most of them were laying down, asleep or texting quietly. Castiel was beginning to sober up a little bit – the alcohol was still fully in effect, but the hazy blanket of his marijuana high was finally starting to loosen and his clarity began to return. Abruptly, he was aware that it was late – a lot later than he’d intended to be there, and for a moment there was panic, then, calm again. The high surged back, a wave that had pulled back with the tide before crashing forward again, before steadying into a comfortable balance once more. Again, he aware of himself, and struggled to his feet, realizing he was alone outside. Dean had left. How long had he been gone? It seemed like hours since Castiel had really seen him. In fact, every thirty minutes had dragged on like three hours, everything slow and personal, every little moment within a moment was amplified. Brightened, slowed, crystal clear so he could see everything, even when lost in thought.

He made his way through the sliding door back into the kitchen, shutting it with some difficulty and frowning when his mouth was too heavy to say Dean’s name. This was starting to stress him out. The dining room was empty, the stocks of food and liquor he’d decimated earlier startling him more than it should. It felt like a dream. Like he was lucid-dreaming, only it was _reality,_ and that thought startled him even more. He felt his head twitch hard as he slowly moved past the dining room and into the living room, surveying everyone. On the two couches, three people were sleeping, and one person was on a laptop in the loveseat. In the next room over, a pair of heads could be seen peaking out from under a fuzzy blanket, empty plastic cups surrounding them as well as packs of cigarettes, car keys, and softly glowing cellphones. Most of the lights were off, only various electronics illuminating the room and the light pouring in through the windows, and it didn’t feel real.

Distantly, he heard a door open, but it felt like a dull roar compared to the bright light of the bathroom’s light spilling through the crack in the door. It crashed across the hardwood, a supersaturated yellow, and next to it the dark wood looked black. Everything was black. Castiel found himself strangely compelled by this, mentally equating it to looking like a comic book, but then the light disappeared, and the room was normal again. Castiel stumbled, suddenly _extremely_ aware of how stoned he was, and Dean was jerking his shoulder and telling him to come upstairs.

So he did.

The house was quiet. When had the music stopped? Probably hours ago. It had all been drowned out by the roar of his own mind, his internal monologue so loud he could swear he was talking. But he kept grabbing his lips and confirming that yes, he was silent, wasn’t babbling to Dean, whose presence seemed utterly surreal. The various electronics in the house, like the wall clock that glowed blue in the hallway and the phone charger with the red light next to a closet clashed with one another, and to Castiel they were as bright as the multicolored rotating lights he’d seen in clubs and concerts. How was this house so bright? A very old nightlight spilled green from the bottom of the wall, clashing over the other reds and blues, and Dean was talking again. How long had he been talking? It had been ages since he’d really listened. Dean was pulling his arm and helping him up the last few stairs, leading him down the right into a room with lots of posters and awards on the walls, and for a moment Castiel worried this was too intimate before his clarity and doubts were submerged in the ocean of his high.

Dean was saying something, and Castiel spoke for the first time in a while.

“What?”

“I said take off your jeans. You can crash here.” How could Dean be sober enough to talk? He was talking so _fast_.

“Is this your room?” He blinked, staring for a long time at the surroundings, trying to make sense of it. “You like _Cats_?”

Dean snorted loudly. “No, that would be my darling Samantha. She’s started wearing the training bra, bless her heart.”

This mildly sexist comment made Castiel laugh for a _very_ long time, and Dean laughed too, laughed because Castiel’s inebriated laughter shook his whole body and made him look crazy, and Dean kind of fell in love with it. But they were both shitfaced, and they’d known each other for less than a week, so he didn’t _do_ anything because that was wrong. He just helped him into bed in a totally not-gay way, checked downstairs one more time to make sure nobody was getting sick, and was asleep a little past five.

Castiel dreamt of flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have always wanted to right high!Cas after The End and it was everything I hoped it would be.


	4. Smart People

Castiel woke up at three in the afternoon. To his surprise, he was fairly sure he didn’t have a hangover – he neither had a headache nor any light sensitivity, although his stomach felt a little unsettled. His bedsheets, which had been tucked around him, hadn’t moved at all; he must have been sleeping the sleep of the dead. Pieces of the night were coming back to him. It was like he remembered everything – because he did, he remembered arriving, the firepit, drinks, smoking, shots, laughing a lot, talking to girls, talking to _Dean_. He remembered everything, but it was like all of the details were smudged together, and while he knew he’d talked and seemed to get along with people, he couldn’t remember faces or what he’d talked about. That knowledge made him _very_ uncomfortable, and he frowned, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them slowly again.

Once he figured out his surroundings, he ventured for a bathroom. Dean’s house was quite a bit less overwhelming in the daytime; last night, his vision had been so skewed that for some reason he’d thought this hallway was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever been. (His memory jogged a little and he remembered _colors_ , Dean’s hand on his arm, the dull roar of his words, following him into the bedroom. There had been laughter, and again, he couldn’t really _remember_ what had happened. Just impressions of the memory. And his impressions made his face flush, eyes dilate, impressions of desire buried under his high.) Now, it was just like any hallway – the walls were painted a tasteful beige, and it was decorated with various photos of Sam, Dean, and the family mounted to it. He took pause at a full family portrait – a much younger looking Dean was smiling with his all his teeth, standing in front of his parents, who were both young and beautiful, the swaddle of Sam supported in his mother’s arms. He made his way to the bathroom to get the evidence of debauchery off his body.

After he was done getting cleaned up, he pulled his clothes back on, made sure he had everything he’d came with, and made to leave. Downstairs, the place was a wreck. Worse than he’d remembered. Cup after cup of beer was on its side, and occasionally the carpet was interrupted with stains, or flipped ash trays, or a pipe that had been dropped or turned over on its side. He didn’t see anyone still around – the couples who’d slept over last night had come and gone, plenty of signs that they’d been there but no fresh ones. No phones sitting on wall chargers, no coffee cups, nothing. He frowned, heading into the kitchen, catching sight of a message written on a whiteboard stuck to the fridge. He snorted a little on principle – it was so domestic looking, but then he was reminded of Dean’s parents. Dead parents. If Dean hadn’t bought that thing (which he probably hadn’t), that meant it was a relic of their’s. Something he couldn’t get rid of.

**Cas,**

**At work. Call me when you wake up, you’ve got my number. Your keys are in the freezer.**

**Dean**

Castiel didn’t call him. He did, however, fetch his keys from the freezer and send Dean a text several hours later, confirming he was okay and that he made it home. And when he was home, he slept.

* * *

 

He spent the weekend doing homework. Almost all of his classes had homework due Monday or Tuesday, so despite the slight hangover he’d had on Saturday, by Sunday he was feeling fine. Dean had sent him a couple of texts, and Castiel only responded to one. He didn’t _mean_ to be distant, but the night was sort of a fog. He remembered pleasure, a powerful body high that had wrapped him and kept him more secure than he’d ever felt. He remembered talking – and talking – and talking, and he sensed he’d said things he wouldn’t have wanted Dean to know. Personal things. He also remembered Dean telling him things about dead parents, and he pressed his lips together, and on the floor next to his books his phone vibrated again. He ignored it.

If Dean was annoyed with him, he didn’t show it when he sat down next to him in their Biology lecture that Monday.

“Cas!”

He attributed the sense of familiarity when Dean called him that to the party – they must have come up with that nickname then. Part of him wanted to hate it on principle; he couldn’t party like that again, Dean was a bad influence. Dean was the kind of person your parents _warned_ you about. He wore a _leather jacket_ , for God’s sake – he **_literally_** looked like the stereotypical Bad Kid in one of those drug resistance videos. And yet, he wasn’t. Castiel knew that. He knew that for everything Castiel did in the party, Dean never pressured him to do it – always offered, and always followed it with ‘but don’t feel obligated, you don’t have to.’ The way Dean was smiling at him, he felt a swell of emotions ( _guilt_ ) wash over him, but he just gave him a very small smile back and said “Dean.”

“How about that party, right?”

“It was very fun. You’ll have to invite me to your next social event.”

“Sure thing, man.” Dean looked like he had something else he wanted to say – there were a number of physical cues that indicated that was the case, but he said nothing further. Castiel frowned a bit at that, he’d wanted a little more out of him than _sick party bro_ , but then he scolded himself. Really, he was being passive aggressive. He was the one who’d ignored him all weekend, and now he was getting frustrated because Dean wasn’t _talking_ enough? Dean, who talked and talked and talked; Castiel probably would barely have to stimulate the conversation and Dean would just run with it, going on about stuff like Iron Maiden and what, exactly, makes Chevrolet the quintessential American car. He was at school to learn, not to… pine. Or whatever he was doing.

The professor walked in, and he began taking notes.

The rest of his week was enjoyable for the most part. In his Drawing class, they worked with charcoal, and even Castiel, who managed to keep his oil paints _only_ on the palette and even frumpy looked more put together than most of the school, looked like an art student for a while. In painting, they continued to work on the mind-numbing still life he’d been dealing with since day one, but his painting looked good. His professor swore they’d be working with the figure after this, which gave him something to hope for. In English, the class was completely dedicated to paperwriting, and he was hashing out short essays on various topics about once a week. In Art Practices, he’d finally gotten an idea together for his newspaper project, which made him feel infinitely better. He’d abandoned whatever inspiration he’d gotten from the obituaries in lieu of something else, but the paper still set in the crumpled heap at the bottom of his bag, crushed under his supplies.

It was boring week, but it was a good week. Boring was good. It was simple.

He was beginning to make Friends Who Were Not Dean, and he didn’t really know if that was a good thing. A very attractive girl in his Painting class had asked for his facebook, but Castiel had responded that he didn’t have one, which seemed to throw her for a loop. So they’d exchanged numbers instead. She was very, very talkative, not unlike Dean, and she swore a lot and on Thursday, he was fairly sure she came to school inebriated, but she wasn’t bad company. She seemed to be very informed about art, and in that way she was a good conversationalist. He also met a young man in Art Practices named Jimmy, who was socially awkward, but seemed like a nice enough person. His concentration was Illustration, with the intention of travelling to foreign countries and doing comic art. It seemed a little far fetched to Castiel, but Jimmy just gave him small smiles and, on a day when Castiel had expressed his hunger, offered him part of his lunch.

They were nice people, but they were Friends Who Were Not Dean.

During the week, campus was suddenly clogged with events that he was being encouraged to go to left and right. They called it Frosh Week. After classes on Monday, he found himself swindled into going to a Philosophy Club meeting, even though he had never taken a Philosophy class in his life and knew very little about what anyone was talking about. Tuesday morning, he found himself at a Greek Affairs meeting, munching on free pizza as students representing the various sororities and fraternities tried to convince him he should go Delta Gamma or Theta Zeppelin or whatever it is they were selling. On Wednesday, _Dean_ of all people convinced him to skip Biology so they could go to the Student Organization fair. Upon inquiriry, he learned that each stall would have free food and “those sorority chicks sure can cook”. Out on the impeccably manicured lawn in from of the University Center, hundreds of stalls were set up, people handing out flyers, clutching clipboards, collecting candy in royal blue bags emblazoned with KU’s logo. Dean just kept smiling in that way he does, showing all his teeth and with his eyes lit up, and he and Castiel ate their way through every Greek organization, all of the foreign language clubs, most of the more obscure sports, and several social activist groups.

Dean didn’t sign up for anything – no matter how many papers were shoved in his face, or clipboards asking for his name and KU email, he just smiled and said no, no thank you, it’s not my thing. Castiel wasn’t so lucky. He was hardly a pushover, but in a moment of weakness he gave his information to the Spanish Club (he had no interest in Spanish, but the food they’d brought was delicious), and with Dean laughing behind him he found himself signing up for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Thursday, the Baptist Collegiate Ministry was having a cookout in front of their building. Castiel was a Methodist like his mother, so _joining_ the BCM probably wasn’t going to happen, but he spent quite a bit of time there, munching on cheeseburgers and talking to people. Being there, surrounded by people who loved God, reminded him that he really needed to find a church, and there were three or four he’d seen driving around campus that looked promising. After he’d finished his fourth free burger, he bid them adieu and promised himself that on Sunday, he’d be going to church just like his mother had raised him to.

He spent most of Friday at school, working in the painting studio to finish up his piece and starting on a liquid graphite rendering (in a new position) of the still life they’d been working on for the past two weeks. In this position, he was facing the skeleton directly, and it made for a very strange piece. All the other elements of the still life, from the vases to the flowers to every other little knickknack their professor had thrown together, was visible in the negative spaces between the bones, and it almost looked as if they were blooming out of it. He worked on the drawing with his laptop open next to him for several hours, listening to some of the bands Dean had texted him to try out, and when he considered himself finished, he spray-fixed his drawing and packed up his things. It was a good day, a productive day, and yet when he thought of the empty apartment waiting for him at home, the hedonistic part of himself wished Dean was throwing another party.

Instead, he went to the Wash World off the corner of Lamar from his apartment, and cleaned everything he owned. Doing laundry at the Laundromat always looked so cheap, even a little soothing, in movies and TV, but it was neither. It cost $1.25 per load, and since Castiel had three loads of laundry, he was out $7.50 and three hours of his time by the time everything was washed and dried. Another moment of feeling utterly productive and kind of empty.

* * *

 

On Saturday, he texted Dean. The apartment could always be cleaned more, but Castiel was sick of cleaning, and he didn’t know anyone else that well. Yes, there were people he’d met in art, but he wasn’t quite on the level with any of them yet where he could ask if they wanted to spend time with him. Dean, however, was. So he sent him a message asking if he wanted to see a movie. About thirty seconds later, his phone rang. Castiel frowned. His mother used to do this – he’d send her a text asking her if he could go somewhere, and instead of just responding, she’d call, which elevated the sense of urgency. Regardless, he swiped the screen and pressed it to his ear.

“Hello?”

Wherever Dean was, it was loud. “What- Hey! Cas, sorry, I’m on break right now at the shop and I thought it’d be faster if I called.”

Castiel realized the crackling sound in the background was an electric welder. “Right.” He cleared his throat, speaking a bit louder. “Yes. I finished up my homework for the weekend except for an English theme and I need something to do. Would you like to see a movie with me?”

Dean yelled something that sounded an awful lot like _LIKE A DATE_?

Castiel found himself shouting into the phone, feeling a bit silly since his apartment was completely silent. “WHAT?”

“LIKE A DATE, MAN.”

Ah. So that was what he’d said. He felt his ears flush.

“NO, LIKE… I DON’T KNOW.” He dropped his voice, still speaking loudly but not outright yelling. He felt silly. “Nevermind. I see this breeches a social norm. Perhaps you could bring some of your other friends if you feel uncomfortable with it just being you and myself?”

“WHAT?”

Castiel rolled his eyes in frustration – really, Dean couldn’t have answered his phone somewhere a little more quiet. “I SAID. YOU CAN BRING SOME OF YOUR FRIENDS IF IT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE.”

There was a shrill noise on the other side of the line, grinding, and then near silence.

“Shit, Cas, sorry about that, _what_ were you saying? They’re doing reno in here too, and on top of the shop sounds this place is a friggen nightmare. I should have just texted you.”

Castiel hated repeating himself. Castiel hated repeating himself even more when apparently Dean was feeling a little (sexually harassed? Isn’t that how he’d put it when Dean had asked him to his house party?). He let out a sigh, lowering his voice again. “I’m not asking you out on a date. I’m asking you to a movie.”

“But if I was asking _you_ on a date, to any movie you wanted to go to up to and including the one you had in mind, would you still say yes?”

Oh.

To say Castiel’s mind was racing would be an understatement. On some level, he was panicking. His first thought was of his mother. She was very pretty for her age; she hadn’t even had him _that_ young, but she aged gracefully, only the slightest peaks of crow’s feet in her eyes revealing what she’d seen in her life. Her hair had always been blonde, usually wrapped up in attractive buns because that had been the fashion for female professional’s in the 90s and that was what she wore. She wore dresses, or dress suits, and never too much makeup because she said it was improper for a lady to paint herself into objectification. He remembered her, in the blue dress with the thin white belt at her waist, how she looked like she was from a different time when she picked him up from school the day he realized he had a crush on a boy named Zach. He remembered her smiling and asking how school was, and how the guilt festered in his stomach, less like a crush and more like a disease.

He remembered his first kiss, and how Becky Rosenbaum’s lips had been so soft, how her whole body had been soft, and how he’d felt something stir in the bottom of his stomach, a low rustle of desire. He remembered his second kiss, with a different girl, and his third and his fourth, and even his first girlfriend, whom he dated for three weeks before she broke it off. She’d said he was boring, and he’d agreed. When he touched her, those rustles of desire he’d felt with Becky, on the floor playing spin the bottle at Mary Abernathy’s 12th birthday party, those rustles were gone. Stifled. He remembered girlfriend number two and three; once he’d really hit puberty, his voice dropped so low you’d think he gargled glass before bed, the girls were interested. And he always sort of was, sort of wasn’t.

He remembered prom with Erin Smith, who wasn’t that pretty but she made him laugh _hard_ , and carried herself like she knew things. Bad things. She’d been from Delaware, then Tennessee, then California, and finally, England, and when he’d asked her about it, she’d been standoffish, _mysterious_. Mysterious like Dean. He’d been into that, into the way she made dirty jokes, listened to old music, introduced him to weird independent films – in the small town of Destiny, she’d been something else. He’d grown up with every beautiful girl in Destiny, and something about seeing the same girls discovering their sexuality whom he’d seen peeing themselves laughing at the 2 nd grade talent show turned him off.

He fingered Erin on prom night, and they never talked after that. It had been awkward, robotic, and his penis stayed half-hard whenever she rubbed him through his pants, but never any more than that, and when he was done fingering her all he’d really wanted to do was wash his hands. He didn’t want to slam her into the wall and mount her, he wasn’t overcome with the kind of desire all of his friends had for each other, their hormones telling them to procreate resulting in unwanted pregnancies and shotgun marriages. He just didn’t feel it.

He thought of his old church. Thought of worried women coming to the front and telling stories of their nephews, who might be _homosexuals_ , and asking everyone to pray for them. He thought of his mother, looking affronted, bowing her head in prayer, no doubt asking God to forgive them, for they knew not what they were doing.

He thought of Dean, gripping his arm and dragging him up the stairs, helping him into bed. He thought of red and blue lights over Dean’s face, of green eyes and freckles, of firepits and weed and screwdrivers in red plastic cups. He thought of pizza and laughter, of calloused hands, of Dean’s hands on an electric welder, not building art with it in the sculpture shop but piecing cars back together. Of dirty rags and greasy jeans, of leather jackets that smelled like whiskey and pipe tobacco, of stupid jokes and classic rock. He thought of Dean, sweat running down his white wifebeater, hands gripping steel as he heaved weights the first time Castiel saw him, and he felt it. He felt it the way he’d felt it with Becky, spinning a root beer bottle because they wanted to be cool with adults, drink of out dark brown glass and pretend it was beer, but they were just twelve, and they weren’t ready to do the things adults do.

The spark of desire, low in his gut.

It scared him.

“Cas? You there, buddy?” Dean sounded nervous. “Listen, I’m, uh, sorry if that was presumptuous. You just keep staring at me the way you do, and I thought you were into it. I’ll just never talk to you again, don’t overreact and try to stake me for being a fag or something.”

He jolted out of his thoughts. “Steak you? What does that mean?”

“Stake me. You know? Like a vampire. Or you know, burn witches at the stake and stuff? More like that because then I’d be a _flaming homosexual_.”

Castiel laughed before he could stop himself. He could hear Dean exhale, then laugh too, and they both just laughed for a while. His nervousness eased out of him a little, but he wasn’t okay, and while the dominant part of him wanted to impulsively say yes the way he’d done in accepting his invitation the party, he knew he couldn’t do that. This was different, this crossed a line into sin. Castiel had never been the type who was _overly_ obsessed with sin, not like some of the members in his church, but he was devout. He remembered the exact day he’d been saved, and he knew he loved God, more than anyone. More than his mother, and certainly much more than Dean. He also knew there were multiple interpretations of the bible, and he tended to interpret it loosely, but this… this was different. Wasn’t it? He’d been raised to believe homosexuals were pitiable. That they were so clouded with their lust that they were incapable of leading virtuous lives, and would inevitably go to hell. Dean certainly didn’t _seem_ blinded with lust, but maybe that was Castiel’s own lust talking. Blinding him, trying to sway him into doing something he knew he shouldn’t.

Dean continued to speak in his silence. “Uh… okay. Well. If you change your mind, call me. Or, you know what, text me. It’s loud here.”

“Sure. Okay, Dean.”

He hung up.

 

* * *

 

Dean had unwittingly planted the seed that would lead Castiel down the path of temptation. Of course, neither of them knew this – when Castiel hung up, he’d taken a shower, made himself brunch, and headed out to the local Methodist churches, meeting some of the members and trying to figure out which one was right for him. If anything, he felt strengthened after turning Dean down – he wasn’t angry at him, filled with internalized homophobia that was threatening to burst out of him. He didn’t feel threatened, or disgusted, or even _sorry_. He felt strong. He’d fought temptation, and as always, the Lord would provide.

And the Lord did. Less than a block from his house, First United Methodist had been exactly what he needed. They’d given him plenty of reading material, talked to him animatedly about how much it pleased them to have young people interested in the Gospel of Christ, and invited him to join them again the next day. So he had. On Sunday morning, he wore his nicest clothes, his pressed slacks with the leather belt, a soft blue dress shirt, and a tie, cleaning up pretty well for an art student. He’d stayed after the sermon, meeting older people who welcomed him to town and a few college-aged members who seemed a bit wary of him. But still, he was happy. This was a good thing. He had somewhere to go if he needed to talk to God, and that was almost as comforting as hearing Dean call him Cas.

In an attempt to prove he wasn’t a bigot, he sat next to Dean, as per usual, in Biology. Dean seemed surprised by this, but Castiel had told him that while he was fairly sure his feelings towards him weren’t romantic (fairly sure being defined as only “there’s a slight chance I’m not attracted to you”), he still wanted to remain friends. Dean had nodded and smiled, albeit it seemed forced, and Castiel tried to not be bothered by that.

He had his first real critiques that week, on his Paintings, Drawings, and Newspaper project.  It wasn’t as brutal as he’d expected it to be – Castiel seemed to actually have talent, not just Talent-for-Destiny. That had always been a worry of his, that when he went to school, he’d realize that just because he was good in a one stoplight town where a flat chested girl named Erin with an eating disorder was considered _mysterious_ , didn’t mean that he was good anywhere else. But he was. That was relieving – he certainly wasn’t the best, but he had time to get better. His Drawing teacher left the still life up, rearranging it and taking some of the skeleton apart for a better understanding of human anatomy, but Castiel was just fine with that. It was a good still life, very stimulating, and his professor told them with pride that they’d be starting wet media. The real relief in the critiques, however, came in his Painting and Art Practices class. While the Painting critique had been brutal, they’d be starting on self-portraits, in a style of painting he’d never done before that utilized ultra-thin glazes of color. In Art Practices, the critique for the newspaper pieces had taken two whole periods, due to the fact that his professor seemed literally incapable of shutting up, but they were highly informative and by the end of it, Castiel had a list twenty names long of famous artists he needed to look up.

 Dean didn’t call him or text him again, and Castiel didn’t know how to feel about that. Good, he supposed, because Dean obviously had sexual feelings for him, which Castiel had no right to return. Bad, because he was lonely again. Lonelier than before.

Towards the end of the week, he made a formal inquiry to his landlord about what it would cost to have a pet, on the basis that his apartment had a mouse problem. That was a lie, but Castiel had sworn when he’d signed the lease that he had no intention of having pets, since they tended to scratch up the floor. The landlord looked utterly alarmed by the idea of mice, which made Castiel feel bad for his little white lie, but (to his surprise), he conceded that the properties had always had rodent issues, especially during the summer, and that if he was getting a cat to catch the mice, he couldn’t charge Castiel a pet deposit in good conscience.

So, he lied. Apparently he’d been doing all sorts of sinning lately. Lying, drinking, smoking. Seducing men. But as long as he asked for forgiveness, these little sins would be forgiven. It was with that in mind that he went to an animal shelter and found himself a kitten, a soft little ball of fluff that had taken a liking to him from the moment he stepped through the door. She was so small, in fact, that he felt clumsy and brutish in her wake, able to hold her in one hand and feeling her little lungs rattle as she sucked in a breath. She was tiny, but perfect and important, and suddenly he remembered a piece of a dream he’d had the night before. In it, Dean was dead. Not just dead, but _long_ dead, but Castiel scooped him in his massive hands and cleaned him up. Squeezed the rot out of his corpse, breathed life into his muscles and knotted the massive wounds in his chest back together. Felt his lungs rattle in his hands as he breathed again.

Then, it was gone. He named the cat Mia, after his mother.

* * *

 

The weekend passed in a blur. Mia kept him busy, which in turn kept him not-lonely, but he’d come to terms with the fact that he had a (very, very small) crush on Dean Winchester and was trying to forget about it. He spent quite a bit of time working on his sketchbook, or practicing with Stonehenge paper, trying to get comfortable with using ink from an inkwell, and the many ways to lay down inkwashes. He went thrifting and found himself a television, and although it was an old television with color that always seemed a little too orange, hooked up to his XBOX he now had Netflix in his living room. He didn’t quite have the income to swing for cable TV, but he made use of the internet by watching Twin Peaks all weekend while he sketched or wrote themes for his English class. And despite the tug he felt in his gut whenever Dean sent him a text (which was, fortunately, not often), it was a good weekend. Church that Sunday was good.

School that Monday was bad.

When he woke up and checked his school email, he found his Drawing professor had sent him an email saying class was cancelled. Two hours later, he woke up again, and his school email was almost _full_ with the number of alerts and KU Police emails he’d received. Drawing had been cancelled, and then ten minutes later, an email saying all classes in the Art Building would be suspended for today, and until the… What? Until the police wrapped up their _investigation_ , all classes in his Drawing classroom would be moved to the printmaking lab. He shuffled through emails, looking for answers. Twenty minutes after the KU Police service had sent out an email declaring the Drawing room was a (and this he could hardly believe), _crime scene_ , the president of the university sent out an email saying that all classes would be suspended for the day.

Castiel frowned. His phone, which had woken him up with an alarm, had two missed calls and about ten missed texts, all from Dean.

 

7:30am: _Don’t get out of bed today, something happened at the art bldg and there are cops everywhere_

8:15am: _sOMeone said it’s a bomb threat_

8:18am: _Strike that theyre full of shit_

9:15am: _are you asleep_

9:30am: _when you wake up please call me_

9:35am: _seriously cas this is important_

9:45am: _Cas for real I know you don’t want to be butt buddies but call me there’s something serious going on_

10:03am: _didn’t you say you took drawing?_

10:55am: _they’re saying somebody’s dead_

11:02am: _call me_

 

 _Dead_? Castiel’s heart sunk. Cancelled classes, then cancelled school, cops everywhere, _crime_ scenes? This was insane. Lawrence was safe; it wasn’t even a real city. The only time anyone died here was of natural causes or drunk driving. Maybe a janitor had a heart attack in the art building. But then why would it be a crime scene? Why would they need to move to a different room? Images from cop shows were forming in his head, of blood spatter and knives sticky from coagulation, and that sick feeling in his stomach increased tenfold. He picked up his phone and called Dean.

“Hello?” It only took one ring.

“Hey—“

“Jesus _Christ_ thank god you’re okay.”

“Of course-“

“No man, you have _no idea_ how crazy it’s been today. God, they wouldn’t tell us fucking anything – just that there’s a student dead in the drawing room, and there’s cops everywhere, and there’s no fucking way there’d be this huge of a police presence if it was a natural death, and for some reason I was so sure it was you because you said that art students had to do a lot of homework at school and I just totally freaked out, and you kept not answering your phone and because you’re a freak of nature, you didn’t have a Facebook, so I couldn’t check you were, and Jesus _Christ_ man you can’t do me like that.”

“I’m okay Dean. I swear.” He paused, trying to process all the information he’d just heard. “I woke up and saw an email from my professor saying class was cancelled, so I went back to sleep. I didn’t find anything out until just now.”

“Okay.” Dean exhaled – he sounded winded, maybe from running or just from yelling at him, Castiel didn’t know. It was a welcome sound. “Okay. Okay cool. I’m glad you’re okay, man.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Are you… okay, Dean?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. I’m okay.”

They lapsed into silence, but Castiel wasn’t ready to hang up. He sighed, still sitting in his bed, rumpled from sleeping well, a framed photo of he and his mother looking _happy,_ all big smiles and hugging each other around the waist, staring up at him. “Do you want to go somewhere, Dean? Maybe get lunch? School is closed, and you sound… rattled.”

“I’m not rattled!”

“Well, alright. We don’t have to-”

Dean seemed to recognize his mistake immediately. “I mean, I’m totally rattled. We should get lunch. Then we can braid each other’s hair and watch Sleepless in Seattle while waiting for our nails to dry.”

Castiel laughed a little. “That sounds good, Dean. I don’t really know the area, so just text me an address and a time and I’ll meet you there.”

“Yeah. Sure Cas, that sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty then! The plot is now rolling. Thanks for all the kudos and feel free to leave some comments, I really appreciate feedback.


	5. American Pie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my readers informed me that after chapter one, I had changed Physics to Bio. I tend to write on various levels of inebriation (like Chuck, LOL), so I guess that's what happened there. I changed the first chapter and from now on it's Bio.

He meets Dean at a sport’s bar an hour later, hair still wet from his shower and a couple of nicks on his face, and Dean’s at a booth drinking a beer and waiting for him. He slides across from him, mumbling an apology for his tardiness (the inflated police presence and media vehicles around the school had slowed him down), and above Dean’s head, the news was reporting the affair. It was a media circus.

In the hour and a half it had been since he woke up, there had been a police conference, and suddenly it was big news. Art student at KU slaughtered at school, killer on the loose, call us if you have any information. There were interviews with her parents, who were crying on camera and talking about how much they missed her, and it all seemed too soon, too fast and _way_ too real. The victim, whose high school photo was on every news station in Kansas, was named Bethany Hayworth. Castiel didn’t know her very well – they’d only had Drawing together (a total of maybe 5 periods), and they’d never spoken, or even really acknowledged each other. During critique, her work had been quite phenomenal – he remembered that far more than her personality, and he made a point to go look at her piece again, which was hanging in the basement hallway next to their now taped-off drawing classroom.

Provided it hadn’t been taken by the police. He frowned. This seemed surreal.

“So.” Dean was talking, folding his menu down in decision, which Castiel promptly took from him and began examining himself. He’d not had breakfast, and he didn’t see a waitress his heading his way. “So. Did you know her?”

Castiel frowned a little. “Not really. We had a class together, but we never spoke.”

“What was she like?”

“Pretty, I guess. Very good at drawing. She worked a lot with reflection? And was quite good at it.”

Dean went quiet and nodded. The waitress eventually made her appearance, and Castiel ordered a coke, bacon-cheeseburger, and texas cheese fries. Part of him wanted a beer too, just to take the edge off of his day, or better yet, a hit off a pipe. Or maybe just the entire bowl. He’d turned his phone off, resolving to call his mother later, but he knew she was probably watching the news now, trying to get a hold of him. It had been released that she was a _female_ art student, but he was certain that when he turned his phone back on, it would be clogged with messages telling him to come home. That it wasn’t safe there, that he needed to just come home, live with his mother rent-free as he always had, and maybe get a job as a tax-accountant. Something simple, respectable. Better yet, a job at their church. Amelia had always told him that he would have been a good priest, but Castiel disagreed. He liked to draw and paint, and had never done well with even _casual_ speech, let alone public speech.

Dean swallowed the rest of his beer and cleared his throat. “Cas. Are you okay? I mean, really? I know you didn’t know her, but…”

“Yes, Dean. I’m okay. Thank you for asking, it was very considerate.”

They ate mostly in silence, watching the news and occasionally asking each other questions about what they’d been doing for the past week. Castiel wasn’t sure if it was an uncomfortable silence, but he was _fairly_ sure it was. Dean was eating his way through a full sized steak with a side of potatoes, which looked utterly indulgent next to Cas’s meal, and he found himself sort of envying that. It never would have _occurred_ to Castiel to get a steak with a beer at noon on Monday, but it occurred to Dean to do that. It never would have occurred to Castiel to get a steak outside of a celebration, and yet Dean ordered one like it was just another sandwich. He ordered his second beer like it was just another coke – he sinned and glutted so casually, it could hardly be called a sin at all. (Maybe that’s what this what. This transparent _thing_ happening between them.)

“Do you want a beer?”

( _They’re in a bar, a hundred bars, they’re all the same and they’re all different, and there’s pretty waitresses in black, or red, or blue, and they’re serving burgers, or hotwings, or steak, but Castiel is always draining a pitcher of beer, or taking shots, or drinking straight whiskey because he likes to be drunk and Dean likes seeing him drunk. Dean, who is older, but the same really, smiling, always talking business. And he is infinitely older, he knows that intuitively. ‘We’ve got a salt and burn down in Knoxville, and what looks like a Tulpa in Albany…’_ )

“No thank you, I have to drive.”

“One won’t kill you-”

“Do you ever feel like you’ve done something before?” Castiel blurts it out before he realizes what he’s saying, and he flushes slightly, taking another messy bite of his burger. But instead of incredulousness, Dean is staring at him with his mouth slightly open, nodding fervently.

“ _Yes_. Oh my god, yes. I never really got that my whole life but lately, I feel like… I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s like I know… It’s not even like dejavu-”

“Right! It’s like…”

Like I’ve met you before. A thousand times. But he doesn’t say it, and neither does Dean, but they just stare at each other, all intensity and understanding and familiarity and Castiel’s could _swear_ , he could just swear. It’s like an itch in his brain, and he scratches and scratches but nothing more comes up, so Dean orders him a beer and he drinks it. And they don’t talk anymore about the dead girl from his art class, or the blood staining their still life, or the fact that the guy is on the loose. They don’t talk about the fact that Dean wants him, and that Dean _knows_ Castiel wants him too, but is inhibited by some archaic idea that homos would burn. Instead, they talk about nothing. They talk about Castiel’s cat, who was so small but so _fast_ , so happy to be alive, so excited to slide around on Castiel’s waxy wooden floors, so excited by breakfast and lunch and dinner, so happy to see him when he walked in that the kitten would often smash her tiny little face into his shoes, and he would just scoop her up and make sure she hadn’t broken herself before putting her back on the floor to continue her assault on his apartment. They talked about Sam, who was apparently around nine feet tall and dating a girl who couldn’t be taller than 5’5”, and the girl was so far out of his league that Sam just grinned stupidly at Dean whenever he left to go see her, as if to say _I can’t believe this is happening_.

They talked about Castiel’s critiques, which Dean seemed endlessly fascinated by, and Dean talked about engineering, which Castiel could really care less about, but Dean’s unending enthusiasm made him care. And then it was music – Cas had listened to some of the bands Dean had told him to entertain, and he’d come back to report that he liked Led Zeppelin due to the fact that their compositions were very mature, but didn’t really like Motorhead or several of the other bands Dean had given him to listen to. In response, Dean put on _Kashmir_ for Castiel on the juke box, which had cost him a whole _dollar_ because it was 2013 and everything was expensive, even listening to one song. But Castiel liked it, even though the song was almost ten minutes long and was ultra-repetitive, he could tell he liked it because he sort of sank into his seat and just listened, really listened.

After lunch, they played pool in the bar for a while. Well, _Dean_ played pool – Castiel didn’t know how, and Dean was so good he was actually betting a couple of rough looking bargoers _five hundred dollars_ that he could beat them. He’d tried to clear his throat, tried to get Dean to stop because _somehow_ he was drunk off those three beers, he had to be. No sober man would do that. And to Castiel’s abject _horror_ , Dean lost the first game, then promptly bet another thousand he could win the second. And the whole time, he didn’t look nervous, like possibly dropping a thousand dollars on a stupid bargame was no big deal, which made no sense because Dean _wasn’t_ well off. Sure, he owned a home, but Dean had specifically told him they’d always lived cheaply. And here he was, betting more money than Castiel lived on in a single month over a game, and like he’d planned the whole thing, he won the second game in only a few shots.  Paid for their lunch, gave the waitress a large tip, and looked at him all smiles and said “Do you want to come hang out at my place for a while?”

So they did.

* * *

 

By Tuesday afternoon, the police had a suspect in custody, and the entire town of Lawrence let out a collective sigh of relief. The University was holding a memorial service at the University Center on Wednesday, and anyone who wanted to come could not be pentalized for missing class to do so. Castiel wasn’t planning on going – he had no place there.

After their lunch and subsequent Pool Hustle, Dean had stuffed the thousand dollars cash under a vase in the hallway of their house and they’d spent a while just hanging out. Dean always sat a respectable distance away from him, never touching him or doing anything that would make him uncomfortable, and part of him hated it. There was a voice in his head actively encouraging him to sin, to slide into Dean’s lap like he was born there, to debauch and indulge the way his body craved. Dean was the only one who could twist him into justifying his indulgences – a month ago, he’d never been drunk, never been high, and had never actively considered what he was considering now. But the other part of his mind, the part that spent Sunday morning at church, the part that read his bible and tried to incorporate religion into most of his artwork, that part kept him still. And he’d rue the day that he abandoned that part entirely.

Sam came home around three, and even before he walked through the door, suddenly Castiel _knew_. He knew what he was going to look like (tall, toweringly tall, very tan, with a defined brow on his skull but surprisingly thin eyebrows. Eyes that curved up, a wide nose, and not a particularly wide mouth. He wasn’t in very good shape now, but he was once, he was so muscular it seemed utterly unnatural on him, and Castiel knew, knew, _knew_. Knew that he’d be wearing plaid, and jeans, and sandles. Knew he’d have a blue backpack on because Sam liked blue, and it’d be a sport’s backpack because it was the most convenient. Castiel knew and knew and knew-) and then the door was open, and there he was. Everything was muffled, like he was underwater, and he knew that Sam and Dean were speaking, perhaps going through customary introductions, but Castiel felt wrong. He felt a deep, _urgent_ sense that everything was wrong, that _Sam_ was wrong

(abomination)

And that he was going to be sick.

( ** _Abomination_** )

And then Sam had his hand outstretched, and Castiel was running for the bathroom, and they both looked completely bewildered, and _maybe_ they were shouting at him, but his skin had gone from red to green in moments, his skin was clammy, his eyesockets were hollow and dark, and he was vomiting up the lunch Dean had won for him _just_ as he made it to the sink.

* * *

 

He spent the next twenty four hours in hell. After throwing up, Castiel had gotten out there, away from Sam and away from that pressing itch in his head, but he could feel something there, something he inherently wanted to touch at but there was something telling him he shouldn’t. He ran a stop sign and a red light getting home, and at one point drifted into the other lane because he was having such a hard time focusing his vision, but he made it home. He slept for a period – almost the entire rest of the day, and when he woke up again, he looked worse. _Felt_ worse. It was almost midnight, and his bed felt smotheringly warm, and he’d managed to make it all the way to the bathroom before it started.

It started with the migraine. From the moment he opened hit the bathroom light, there was pain, and it was so great he cried out, clutching his head and wrenching his eyes shut, and _God_ it was _unimagineable_. It was like there was something inside of him, burrowing into his brain, and he could almost feel its sharp little legs tearing through his grey tissue, its teeth chewing and digging and _burrowing_ , and he’d turned the light off and sat in the bathtub because he didn’t know where else to go. God, there was _nothing else_ but pain, and it dug and dug and dug, tearing through his brain and pressing up against his skull, like it was trying to dig its way out of his head, and he yelled and screamed and cursed, but there was no relenting. It was unbearable. And it lasted for three or four hours before he couldn’t take it anymore, and it was over.

When he woke up again, he was still in the bathtub, and everything was dark. It took him a moment to remember why, but the throb in his head gave it away, no longer quite the agony it had been but he was so sore. That’s when the aches began.

He could only liken it to being crushed. At first, it had felt like he was just _very_ exhausted, the way he was after an intense workout (though he hardly worked out much anymore), or perhaps the way he felt if he’d been hunched over a canvas for eleven or twelve hours. But it was _worse_ , so much worse. He’d managed to make it out of the bathroom and back into his bed before the full weight of it overtook him, and it started in his back. God, it was so _heavy_. It was the worst back pain he’d ever felt in his life. Worse than when he’d gone jet skiing in boy scouts and flew off the skis, and the water had felt like concrete when he hit it; the force had been so massive that his whole backside was bruised. It was worse than when he fell down two flights of stairs, and the sharp edges of the stairs kept stabbing him in the back, ribs, hips, and when he’d found himself at the bottom with a broken leg and a cracked rib, his whole body was splotched purple and blue. It was worse than all the books he’d ever carried, all of them combined. It was like trying to carry a _car_ on his back, and when he’d finally collapsed in his bed, the aches started to spread.

Castiel had always hated going to hospitals because of one very peculiar thing – _pain charts_. It frustrated him because, when he’d broken his leg or cracked a rib, or that time he’d gotten pneumonia, or that time he’d gotten in a fight with Billy Newman because he’d called Meghan Benson a slut; every time he’d been admitted, they’d asked him to rate his pain. And then they’d showed him a picture of ten faces in various levels of distress. The problem was that the first three faces didn’t ever looked pained at all – they looked as if perhaps they were just having a bad day, or maybe they’d forgotten a cell phone charger at home and now they had to be extra-aware of their cell’s usage for the day, less it die at an inopportune time. The other seven faces looked pained, until the last one which was crying, underneath that a label stating Worst Pain Ever Experienced.

At this moment, Castiel was experiencing the Worst Pain Ever Experienced. And that cartoon crying face needed to be adjusted, because this, this was _unbearable_. He was crying, of course, but he was also screaming and sobbing and every now and then just holding his body as still as he could, willing the aches to go away, but it felt like he was being slowly crushed. Like any moment, his bones would break under invisible slabs of concrete that were being forced on top of him.  He thought of The Crucible – a play he’d read in his Junior year about witches, and he vaguely remembered discussing the torture these women endured. Wasn’t there something about crushing them under rocks? He didn’t know. He could hardly even _think_ , let alone remember the fates of the Salem witches, and he wanted to call 911, he _really_ wanted to call 911, but his phone was on a charger downstairs and he couldn’t get up.

So he passed out, again.

When he woke next, it was noon. He could tell only by where the sun was, and he’d long since given up on the idea of going to class, but he felt marginally better for the time being. He went into the bathroom and emptied the medicine cabinet into a plastic bucket, taking it with him into the living room and collapsing on the couch.

The fever started about twenty minutes later. Which, he supposed, was good – it gave him a little time to get _ready_ for it. On his coffee table, he lined up everything from the medicine cabinet. Five different types of over the counter painkillers, two bottles of cough syrup, a thermometer, several packages of bandaids, Nyquil, Dayquil, mucus relief, sleep aids, fiber, vitamins, laxatives, immodium, Pepto Bismol, and a couple of loose packets of pills that he wasn’t sure _what_ they were. Next to that, a box of tissue, and finally the bucket, should he throw up again. He’d also had the time to put something on TV, get all of the liquids out of the fridge and onto the floor next to the couch (several 2litre bottles of soda, four different kinds of juice, and plenty of bottles of water), and eat a couple of crackers before it hit.

As his temperature began to rise, his nose began to run. He burrowed himself deep into his couch, trying to force himself to eat so he could take pills, anything to make this _stop_. He was sore all over, like he’d strained every bone and muscle in his body, and his head still ached from (this morning? Last night?) And then, _then_ came the cough. In two hours, his temperature rose six degrees, and he found himself steadily more and more delirious, coughing so hard it made him gag, a pile of tissues accruing at his bedside, and somewhere, he wondered if he was dying. He clutched a bottle of lukewarm sprite, sipping it as often as he could like a lifeline, and Twin Peaks was on in the background but he wasn’t _sure_ if it was.

He hit 104 around three o’clock and had coughed himself so hoarse he was effectively mute. Just reaching out to take another swig of cough syrup was a chore – his whole body was shaking, and he felt colder than he’d ever been, and his shirt was _soaked through_ with how much he was sweating, and every now and then, that little voice said

(You’re gonna die in here.)

He wouldn’t be surprised.

By six, his fever had dropped to a slightly more reasonable 102, and for the first time all day, he felt strong enough to stand. He made himself a bowl of chicken flavored ramen, as it was about the closest thing to what his mother would have made him, and he managed to get about half of it down before he was rushing for his bucket. Throwing up _now_ hurt a million times more than it had yesterday at Dean’s house – his throat was sore, almost _bloody_ from the constant barrage of coughing, and his whole body ached, and he prayed. He prayed that whatever poison he’d been given or punishment this was for _whatever_ he had done would just stop, and after he finished throwing up he gargled sprite because he was afraid to swallow it.

It didn’t matter though. He threw up five more times within the next two hours, until all that came up with bile and the partially dissolved paste that had been his pills.

All the while, his phone sat next to him. He didn’t know why he didn’t call someone, but each time he thought about it, he recoiled. Part of him desperately wanted to call his mom – he wasn’t cut out for this, and she knew what to do. But every hour he didn’t call her, the more he wanted to keep her in the dark about it, so she wouldn’t have to worry. He wanted to call 911, tell them that he was probably dying and needed to go to a hospital, but he didn’t have health insurance outside the school, and he knew he couldn’t make it to KU’s student health center. He could hardly see, let alone _drive_ , and he doubted that the health center, with its fairly limited resources, would know what to make of a student who’d gone from being perfectly healthy to _every_ kind of ill in less than a day.

He wanted to call Dean, but he knew that if the Health Center wasn’t qualified to help him, Dean certainly wasn’t. So instead, he just prayed, he prayed until he finally stopped coughing long enough to sleep, or maybe it was because he’d stopped vomiting long enough to hold down his Nyquil, he didn’t know. But he slept. And slept. And slept.

* * *

 

He woke up on Thursday, and the first thing he was aware of was the smell. His living room smelled worse than any hospital he’d ever been to, no, _he_ smelled worse than any hospital he’d ever been to. His shirt and boxers were completely soaked through, and the blanket he’d tangled himself into smelled foul, and _god_ , there was vomit in a bowl next to him, and tissues everywhere, and spilled medicine, and maybe a little bile on the floor, and if he wasn’t so desperately happy that he felt _okay_ , he’d probably have dry heaved. But he didn’t.

The first thing he did was take a cold shower. The second thing he did was febreeze his living room and throw out everything that reminded him of the day before. The vomit went down the toilet, the tissues were stuffed into a garbage can, and the various sticky messes on his hardwood were scrubbed off, despite how sore his bones still felt. After a very, _very_ careful breakfast of cheese and crackers, he opened up the windows and lit a few candles, trying to get the smell of rot and sickness out of his living space, but it persisted. He wasn’t really surprised. For the first time in a day and a half, he checked his phone, and aside from about five texts from Dean, there was nothing of import. Somehow, he’d expected there to be, like his mysterious cocktail of illnesses the day before was an omen to something worse, but no, the apocalypse hadn’t happened overnight for anyone but Castiel Novak.

He sent Dean a text, telling him that while he’d been very ill, he was fine now but probably skipping classes today as well. Dean replied that he was coming over after class (which was alarming – his normally clean apartment was utterly foul), but he knew that his friend was probably the single most stubborn person he’d ever met, and maybe having company for an hour or two wasn’t so bad. If he could heave himself up, he’d go down to the smoke shop on the corner and get some incense before Dean showed.

He called his mother and gave her an abbreviated version of what happened, and hearing her worry and bustle about and telling him everything he needed to take so none of his symptoms _returned_ was sort of relieving. He wished he’d had the strength to ask her to come the day before – having someone there just to make sure he didn’t drown in his own vomit or faint trying to walk around would have been nice, but instead all he had were delirious memories of his cat hiding from him. Mia was currently sleeping on the loveseat, the trauma of his behavior yesterday having apparently worn her out, and he scratched behind her ears every now and then as he cleaned up. He couldn’t remember her being there yesterday, but between all the vomiting, screaming, and throwing up, she’d probably hid in a closet or underneath the couch.

A couple hours before Dean was due to arrive, Castiel felt good enough to go out. He dosed up on various medications, checked his temperature (safely down to 98.7), and wore the darkest sunglasses he had, and was relieved to find that his motor skills had returned. His first stop was at a dollar general to pick up more clear soda, and then a sub sandwich shop across the street had suddenly seemed like the most appetizing thing in the world, so he got a roast beef sandwich on the softest, sweetest bread they had. It was simple, but it tasted wonderful to him, and he drove around for a while, just driving for the sake of it, eating his lunch and occasionally dabbing at the phantom sweats and clammy attacks that attacked his brow.

The smoke shop was endlessly fascinating to him, and he briefly wondered why he’d never been inside one before. Apart from the various brands of tobacco (chewing, pipe, and a host of other sorts he’d never seen before), there was every type of glass smoking implement in the world. Tiny pipes barely longer than a finger, bongs almost as tall as him, hookah sitting on ornamental tables, phallic looking bubblers that were wide and narrow at various points; each piece was a tiny sculpture, and most of them didn’t even have casting seams. Did that mean that these were hand blown? He didn’t have the courage to ask. After looking through some posters and tapestries, he finally made it to the incense, and they had more variations than he’d ever seen in his life. There were 20 or so different florals, about 30 fruit flavors, 15 that were meant to emulate various herbs, 10 that had sexual names but didn’t smell like sex (or the human body) at all. There was incense that smelled like marijuana, tobacco, whiskey, and there was incense that smelled like nothing at all. Or perhaps by the time he’d made it that far, his nose was so assaulted by so many different scents he couldn’t smell anything.

He picked up several cones of a strong smelling incense that sort of reminded him of being out in the woods, as his eyes lingered on a glass pipe that was the most attractive shade of green for a little too long before he tore himself away. He wasn’t buying a glass pipe unless he had weed, and he wouldn’t get weed until he had a dealer, and since he _didn’t_ have a dealer, he wasn’t going to justify a frivolous expense.

Dean showed up a little late, but it had given Castiel time to make sure his apartment wasn’t _utterly_ horrendous. The living room was clean, but there was still a faint smell of something rotting underneath the incense, but he hoped Dean wouldn’t notice. Even with his shower, Castiel had a feeling he smelled utterly repulsive, and his face… he’d taken care not to look at it for too long. He was pasty, a sickening shade of white with a hint of green around every corner and crease in his face, with the exception of his lips. They were almost completely white, except for the cracks which were red with blood, and no matter how hard he sucked at them or how much lipbalm he applied, they looked distinctly unhealthy. Short of applying lipstick, his mouth was a lost cause. His eyesockets were still dark and sunken, but the bloodshot, sleep deprived look in his eyes had tapered slightly, and he was no longer _shaking_ the way he had before, but he still dimmed the lights a little so Dean couldn’t completely see how unhealthy he looked.

It occurred to him he hadn’t been to school all week, and that he needed to email his professors and tell them what happened, but Dean was walking through the door and going “ _Jesus_ Cas, it smells like a headshop in here, have you been smoking-- your _face_.”

Castiel laughed bitterly, sipping on his sprite and nodding. “I’ve been ill.”

“Yeah no _shit_ , look at you. The hell happened?”

“Unless you poisoned me, I believe my burger was rancid. Sit down, Dean.”

Dean didn’t take the loveseat – Mia had curled up and was sleeping soundly, her tiny body vibrating with each breath she took – instead he just sat right next to Castiel, even though the sofa was a tight squeeze for two men their size. “Damn, Cas, why didn’t you call me or something? I could have…”

“There was nothing you could have done that I hadn’t already done. It’s fine, Dean.”

“I could get you your work…”

“This isn’t high school. I’ll email my professors, Dean.” His sore throat made him sound clipped, and he tried to relax a little, giving him a small (albeit painful considering his cracked lips) smile. “I’ll be doing that after you leave. I’ve not been in class all week, so I will probably be unavailable next week to do anything.”

“Right, right, I get you. Sammy kept telling me to go fly to your rescue and shit but you weren’t answering your texts. I swear, this has been the weirdest damn week. Did you hear they caught the guy who killed that girl?”

“Briefly, but if you have anything new, feel free to share.”

“Apparently one of the janitors saw him leaving the art building right around the time it happened. Real big dude, and the evidence is pretty overwhelming, so it’s kind of a done-deal.”

It wasn’t that Castiel had felt _unsafe_ , per se, but he felt safer knowing that Bethany’s killer wasn’t still on the loose. Dean talked for a while, about the case, about the memorial (which he hadn’t _gone to_ , exactly, but had had such a massive presence that the entire alumni lawn outside the University Center was full of people, and you could hear the speeches even inside), and briefly about Sam. Dean had finally figured out who the mystery girlfriend was, although it had taken a fair amount of work. Dean had a facebook, but never used it, and out of paranoia, Sam wouldn’t add him as a friend. Castiel didn’t really _get_ that – he and his mother had never had fast internet at the house until he was a Junior in high school, and by then MyPlace was no longer something people used and facebook had been utterly confusing to him. He wasn’t meant for social networking. But he nodded along as Dean told a daring tale that involved a lot of breaking into his brother’s computer and looking through his messages and texts on his cell. Castiel chastised him, arguing that it was a complete breech of privacy, but Dean just dismissed him and said _all he wanted_ was a single photo. Just one photo and he’d let Sam do anything he wanted.

So naturally, when Dean found the photo, he’d saved it to his phone and showed it to him at the first opportunity. She was pretty in a very generic way, the way the girls back in Destiny had been pretty. Being underaged, her curves hadn’t filled out yet, and she still had that unappealing high school aesthetic of being overly slim and underdeveloped, but she had a nice smile, and her red hair bobbed in a loose bun on top of her head. He didn’t really have an opinion, but he could tell Dean was proud, that he thought this girl was far out of Sam’s league. Castiel couldn’t comment. After his attack yesterday, he could hardly even remember Sam’s face. He vaguely remembered the look of horror on it as Castiel ran for the bathroom, trying not to vomit all over their carpet, but he couldn’t… really remember Sam. And he didn’t want to. Something instinctively told him to stop, just let it go, and he did.

Dean hung around for most of the evening. They watched an episode of Twin Peaks, which Dean likened to X-Files and Twilight Zone, and that seemed to be a good thing. Castiel had seen several episodes of Twilight Zone, but growing up in the 90s, his mother deemed X-Files to be too scary and wouldn’t let him watch it. They drank soda and talked, and Castiel never offered to fix him food and Dean never expressed that he was hungry, and it was nice. It was comfortable.

And then at some point, when Castiel was applying more lipbalm and trying not to blanch at how whenever he smiled he tasted blood, Dean kissed him.

* * *

 

When Castiel was eleven, he met Becky Rosenbaum. At the time, she was the prettiest girl he’d ever met – she had green eyes, and blonde hair that was also brown, and sometimes red if the sun hit it just right, and when she smiled, he could barely speak to her. She’d lived in Wichita, and before Erin Smith, that was the most exotic as any of the new students ever got. Destiny had so few children, in fact, that the elementary, middle, and high school could all fit in two buildings, which were built next to one another. The elementary school was in the smaller building, and it was considered a very big deal in an eleven year old’s life when he stopped getting off the school bus and heading the Small Building, but turned right and instead entered the Big Building. And the first time Castiel ever went into the Big Building, he saw her.

She was on the dance team, and she had braces with colorful rubber bands in them, and even though she had braces, her smile was radiant and quickly, boys were tripping over each other trying to impress her. The younger ones would harass her as a mean’s of seduction which, unsurprisingly, never worked; Becky Rosenbaum was too _refined_ for that. She was from Wichita, and her braces weren’t put on by Dr. Newberry on 5 th like every other kid who had to have them. She’d gone to an elementary school with over a thousand kids, and she’d grown up in a _real_ city, and you could tell by the way she stared longingly out the window that she was dreaming of going to the Sedgwick County Zoo (Castiel had been once on a field trip in 5 th grade and it was one of the most memorable moments of his short life), or going to all of the amazing museums, or spending time at the major shopping mall there. He’d never been, but his mother sometimes would go for the weekend, and she’d come back with bags of new clothes and a smile on her face, and Castiel knew that Wichita was _better_.

Within their first week of middle school, Becky had a boyfriend named Kyle. For their age, he was tall and handsome, and he played football for the Destiny Middle School Lions, and if their middle school was large enough to _have_ cheerleaders, she would have been one of them. He took her to the drive in, and then the homecoming dance, and every male at the middle school homecoming glared at Kyle. They wanted to _be_ Kyle. Becky had worn a frilly pink dress that went down to her knees, and she’d _actually_ known how to dance, and when she wasn’t dancing Kyle under the table, she laughed with the friends she’d made that week, standing by the refreshments and being intimidating solely on the basis of her _existing_. She and Kyle broke up a week later, and then she had a new boyfriend, and a boyfriend after that. She was too pretty to be single, and whenever she was, the middle school boys were talking about it in hushed voices, looking over their shoulders at her with longing in the lunchroom.

When Mary Abernathy turned twelve, Castiel had gotten an invitation. There were two possible reasons he got an invitation: A, Mary Abernathy’s mother went to church with _his_ mother, and B. he’d hit puberty in a way that wasn’t _completely_ unattractive. While most of his peers were neglecting to pop their whiteheads or wearing deodorant, Castiel had shot up almost a foot in just a year, and his voice was dropping a little every day. By the time he finished developing, it would be quite a bit lower, but in 7 th grade, he was _mature_. He still didn’t know to this day for which reason Mary had invited him, but he’d gone, hallmark in hand with a Walmart giftcard inside. He’d gone because Mary and her friends had all gotten _very_ pretty, and while he wasn’t confident in himself enough to actually talk to any of them, he thought that maybe just being in proximity would wane at his social awkwardness and at some point, he’d say hello.

His mother had dropped him off at three, to return at eight, and for most of the party he was quiet, speaking when spoken to and participating in whatever games Mary wanted him to. She’d been _awfully_ nice to him all night, in fact; she’d made him participate in charades, a very uncomfortable game of twister, some video games, and when the sun had finally set, she declared they were playing spin the bottle. This was apparently what most of the boys had shown up for; they’d flopped down into the circle easily, mentally counting to make sure that the number of girls were at least equal to the boys, and then, Becky Rosenbaum was there. She was the kind of girl who could arrive to a party four hours late and everyone would welcome her, having saved her cake and pizza, because she was just so stunning, so smart, so funny.  So after she gave Mary her gift (a bag full of makeup and body wash that she’d gone to _Wichita_ to get, which Mary seemed utterly delighted by), she sat down. Right next to Castiel. He could hardly believe it.

Mary’s rules were that if you landed on someone of your own gender, you had to kiss them on the cheek (most of the boys had groaned and argued about that, but the promise of possibly kissing Becky Rosenbaum kept the bitching to a minimum), if you landed on someone of the opposite gender, you had to kiss them on the mouth, and if you landed on someone more than one, it was obviously fate and you had to go play Seven Minutes in Heaven. These seemed like fair enough rules – Castiel’s _very_ first crush, Zachary Day, was sitting across from him, but Zach had turned into a very rude person, and he was the only person Castiel _actively_ didn’t want to hit when he span.

Being her birthday, Mary went first, and didn’t hide her disappointment when she landed on a boy who was suffering through puberty in a way Castiel just wasn’t. The next person to go ended up having to kiss him on the cheek, and then made a huge production about pretending to spit the taste of Castiel’s face out of his lips, just to make sure everyone knew he was Totally Not Gay. Going along with it, he wiped the nonexistent saliva from his own face, but he hadn’t really minded. It was a dry, chaste kiss, not unlike the sort people placed on his cheeks or forehead all the time at church. They went around the circle, young, hormonal pre-teens leaning across it and kissing each other, never too long and never with tongue, and Castiel had supposed it wasn’t all bad. It was mostly harmless.

It was harmless until Becky span and you could hear a pin drop when it landed on Castiel, and then the prettiest girl he’d ever met was pulling him by the jaw toward her and kissing him firmly on the lips, and it had been _wonderful_. It had lasted maybe five seconds, and he’d only barely kissed her back, but even into his adulthood he would remember her. He would remember how her hair had been down, and the dirty blonde curls had tickled his face, how her kiss had been firm but her lips had been soft, how her _hand_ had been soft when she covered his with hers, and how for that five seconds, there was nothing in the world but the two of them.

Kissing Dean Winchester was better. Kissing Dean was like lighting a firecracker in his chest, in his groin, and their lips were _maybe_ connected for a second or two before Castiel grabbed the back of his neck so hard it bruised, and Dean must have thought he was pushing him away because he leaned into the couch a little, letting out a noise that could have been apology. Instead, Castiel used him for support, hauling himself into Dean’s lap, all knees and long legs and not enough room for both of them on this tiny couch, smashing their lips together like it the last thing he’d ever do, and it was closed mouthed but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the single most intimate moment of his entire life. It was more intimate than making out with Erin, more intimate than sliding his hand up and between her legs, this _closed mouthed kiss_ turned him on more an pressing two of his fingers inside her and feeling her grind on them, grind against _him_.

Dean’s hands, which were still and shocked and clutching the arms of the couch, abruptly remembered their place, and they were all over him. Squeezing his hips, his ass, the backs of his thighs, mapping out his shape underneath his clothing, and Castiel yanked him forward by the scruff of his neck, grinding his hips down and pressing his tongue between his lips, and it happened fast but it could never be fast enough. This was what it was supposed to feel like. This was the reason people never left Destiny – girls like Becky did to them when Dean was doing to him now, lighting a fire underneath his heart that was urgent and erotic, and Dean’s tongue was in his mouth, twining his own, and he could feel him shifting underneath, grinding up into his ass, and it was so good. They weren’t moaning, and the TV wasn’t on; it was utterly silent except for the wet sounds of their lips and the frantic sound of them shifting against one another, looking for friction and relief, and it was so _hot_.

“Cas-”

Dean hadn’t broken it; he was speaking into his mouth, and Castiel rested his hand on one of Dean’s broad shoulders and ground down onto his cock with more sexual aggression than he’d ever had in his life, and Dean bucked under him, head falling back and letting out a keen of appreciation. “Shit, _ugh_ , Cas, you’re so-”

“ **Hot**.” Castiel spoke, and with his voice worn out from coughing it sounded even lower than usual, it sounded like he ate glass and iron nails, and it was straight to Dean’s groin and pooled in a way he could hardly stand. One word out of him and it was like he was a teenager again, pressing his erection into the curve of Castiel’s ass through their clothes, trying to get any relief because he felt so horny he could die. This was worth waiting, this was worth all of the nervous energy that had built in his stomach trying to _resist_ doing it, worth all the fear and worth the possibility of rejection – they weren’t even in bed together, and he could already tell Castiel banged like an angel on PCP. Dean could feel him practically vibrating in his lap, no understanding of what’s too much or not enough, Castiel threw himself _completely_ into him without worrying about the consequences, and it was so hot.

It was being kissed with a combination of reverence and fury, it was dry humping like it was the most erotic thing in the world, it was hard hands on his shoulders or neck, holding him still, dragging him forward. It was like being strapped to a comet, and Castiel’s sexual energy left him feeling desperate, dazed, virginal by comparison.

Castiel tore his lips away, staring into Dean’s eyes with a frown, hips still moving of their own accord and grinding, erection tenting his sweatpants and he could feel Dean hard through his jeans.

“We can’t have sex.”

“Wha- J _esus_ , Cas, do you even- _ugh_ , do you even feel what you’re doing to me?”

In answer, Castiel grabbed his shoulders _hard_ for support and ground down, Dean’s cock getting so much perfect _friction_ that for a minute he thinks he might come. In his pants. Like he did when he was fifteen and Cassie Hayden was into dry humping too, but she was _never_ as enthusiastic as Castiel. In fact, he was fairly sure he’d never been with anyone this enthusiastic, male or female. “Yes, Dean.”

“And even if we don’t have sex right now, or ever, you’re not gonna have a religious crisis and decide you don’t want to do this with me anymore? That you don’t want me anymore?”

“No, Dean.”

Castiel couldn’t stop. He’d tasted blood and wanted more, and whether Dean knew it or not, he’d created a monster. Every homophobic sermon he’d ever heard and agreed with had gone out the window the moment he realized that touching Dean felt like _this_ , and suddenly, he felt like he could do anything. So he kissed him, hard, to shut him up because he had no interest in talking about their feelings. Castiel Novak was a hedonist. He liked drinking, and smoking weed, and grinding Dean Winchester so hard he could feel the creases and veins in his cock through _two layers_ of clothing. He liked the look on Dean’s face, which was of surprise and lust and _reverence_ , and he liked the startled way he reacted when Castiel would grind on him in a particularly forceful way. He liked _this_.

In matters of God, he found it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL THIS HAS BEEN A GOOD CHAPTER IMO. inspirational songs: gods and monsters by lana del rey and who did that to you by john legend. actually, a good bit of the django unchained soundtrack was playing while I wrote this. Anywho, go check out those songs, and as always, I'd love any feedback. Thanks for all the comments and kudos so far.


	6. The Paper Chase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter was about 3000 words longer than usual, this one is about 1000 shorter. Whoops. This one's also a little more Dean-centric, and I find this voice to be... interesting. I think I like Cas's voice better. Also not a whole bunch of dialogue in this chapter, but the next one, there will be more. Additionally, I made some minor facelift-adjustments to the chapter index: all the chapter titles except the prologue and epilogue are college movie titles.

During the Sunday morning sermon Cas dragged him to, Dean thinks about sex.

How couldn’t he? The preacher was going on and on about overindulging, of sins of the flesh, and Cas was there next to him looking like a perfect little gentleman in slacks and a tie, still a bit green around the gills but lips all swollen from kissing. He wondered if anyone here knew – Castiel had introduced him as his friend, Dean Winchester, and then there had been older people everywhere, shaking his hand, happy to see him, happy to see that there were still young people interested in the Word, and Dean didn’t have the heart to correct them, so he just smiled in that disarming way that put trust into people’s minds and just _yeah, yeah, great to be here, always interested in the good book_. Castiel had laughed each time Dean lied, never touching him but never straying far, either. When Castiel moved one way, Dean inevitably followed; if Castiel turned to speak with a churchmember, Dean’s eyes would be on him, never wholly listening to the conversation but never excusing himself from it either.

Thursday had been good. Thursday had been the _horrible_ smell of whatever incense Cas had picked up, masking the smell of something worse, the kind of thing you had to get on your hands and knees to get out of floors, maybe even tear out the wood. It smelled like death, and there Cas had been, with his eyes red and his eyesockets _purple_ , his lips white except for the feathered lines of blood persistently hanging into the cracks of his mouth. And they’d been talking, watching something on Castiel’s XBOX, and there had been glasses of water, juice, sprite, and Cas had been putting lipbalm on because every time he smiled, he split his lip right in the center and blood would run down onto his front teeth. And fuck, he tried not to sound so gay but he loved him them, loved him in a way that was old, like he’d known Castiel for a long time. Like they had history, even though they didn’t, and Dean kissed him because he didn’t know what to do with himself. With that love.

But Dean learned he didn’t know Castiel at all. He’d expected to get punched, or at least _slapped_ , probably with some self-righteous speech about how Dean had no right, and then there’d be something about corruption, and then there’d be something about Jesus, and Dean was fully prepared to just take it because Cas would have been right. He _didn’t_ have a right. Castiel had told him No and he’d just done what he wanted anyway. Instead, Castiel was all over him, all dark hair and dark eyes and stubble rubbing against his cheek, and even with his dry lips Cas kissed him like he was dying, like it was the last thing he’d ever do.

If one defined sex as penetrative intercourse, they didn’t have sex. But that didn’t mean Dean wasn’t satisfied – touching Castiel was chaining himself to a comet, and Castiel was always thousands of miles away, speeding through space before Dean even knew what had hit him.

Thursday had been Castiel yanking him by the jacket and dragging him into his bedroom, which smelled much better than the living room – every inch of it smelled like Cas. His wrinkled pillows, unmade bed, dirty laundry, mementos from home; everything was Cas and he reveled in it. The smell made him heady, like if he drank a glass of whiskey too fast, not _drunk_ or _tipsy_ but just heady, and the whole thing felt unreal. So when Castiel’s lips were on his again and this time Dean tasted _blood_ , that little moment was like endless clarity for him – it confirmed that this _was_ real, it would always be real, even if everything else wasn’t. Cas was in his lap again, grinding into him deeply, kissing everywhere, and at some point Dean had latched onto his throat like a dog and bit until he bruised.

There had been hands, Cas’s hands, large, calloused, covered in scars, and Dean’s hands had been up his shirt, his cock pressed against him as they dry humped like teenagers, and there had been bites and grunts and very, _very_ occasionally moans that sounded a little girlish to both of them. Castiel, as if suddenly remembering something very important, had pulled away from him for a moment, breaking the kiss, breaking the hungry, desperate _thing_ that was happening between them, and Dean had been ready to protest when Castiel had put his hand over his groin and unzipped his jeans. In church, Dean’s face was red, and in retrospect he’d probably made some undignified bitchnoise because Castiel had smirked at him in a way that was _completely_ inhuman, and it sent him into a lust he’d never felt so little control over. Castiel, who pushed Dean’s jeans off his hips and was suddenly jerking him off like it didn’t _completely_ go against that whole ‘We can’t have sex’ declaration he’d made not twenty minutes ago, and Dean was so fucking overwhelmed he thought it couldn’t be real. That he was going to wake up alone with his boner any minute now, but it kept happening, and Cas kept _kissing him_ with this urgency that Dean’s mind couldn’t have made up.

Because _nobody_ kissed like that.

Cas had been too many places at once; his weight was _everywhere_ , like his body was massive because it seemed like every inch of his body was being suppressed, but Cas wasn’t anywhere but between his legs, in reality. Dean’s knees were adjacent to Cas’s shoulders, and the hand that wasn’t jerking him off like it would _save their lives_ was holding him by the neck, bruising what was already bruised, holding him in a kiss that tasted like blood and sickness and something underneath that, Cas _cascascas **cas**_ , and Dean was suddenly _there,_ way too fucking fast, and he must have recoiled or something, trying to hold it in, because Castiel had just yanked him back into it, ripping his orgasm out of him like it had been his all along. There was no porn speak, no _cum for me Deans_ , no raising his hand to lick the semen away while maintaining eye contact; Castiel didn’t move like that. Dean didn’t understand then, and hell, a lifetime of fucking Castiel wouldn’t _make him understand_ , but as he reminisced in church, he thought that Cas might be something really, genuinely special.

He’d thought a whole bunch of girls were genuinely special in high school, and infinitely more in college, when all of them were smart and funny and had quirky talents. And there’d been guys, too; going to KU had taught him that being bisexual was not only acceptable, but practically normal. But Castiel… it was so different. Castiel looked at things, ordinary things, like a discarded beer can on the side of the street with such intensity, you’d think it was art. And for a while, Dean had thought that was what Cas _was_ doing – like that annoying guy from American Beauty, videotaping plastic bags and calling it beautiful. But it was more than that. It wasn’t just deep appreciation, but like he was experiencing everything for the first time. Life _happened_ to most people and they didn’t even know it, but Castiel seemed abundantly aware at how much even the most pointless things in the world had worth. So he didn’t fake anything. If Cas was moved by a snake in the grass, he would stop and watch it. If he was moved watching an old woman reading a newspaper, he’d watch her, always with a small frown, _really_ looking at her. And that was how he’d looked at Dean, as he made him cum.

That had been the first handjob. After Dean had recovered, he’d thrown Cas onto his back and sucked him off, and Cas had _screamed_ , fingers digging into his sheets and hips canting to fuck Dean’s mouth, and God, Dean let him. Dean realized on Thursday that he was about fucking ready to indulge him anything, because after Dean swallowed, Cas had just looked and him and said “Do you have any weed?”

All sex faced, chest heaving, eyes dilated, hair everywhere. How could he say no?

So calls had been made. Castiel didn’t have a smoking implement and Dean was _shit_ at rolling joints, so they’d gotten dressed and hauled into Dean’s impala to run errands. It was dark, and Castiel was glowing underneath the streetlights, glowing whenever he checked his phone, laughing at his jokes and smiling when Dean had slid a Led Zeppelin tape into the deck, and he’d been happy. He’d been happy when he took the long-long way to his dealer’s house so they could listen to the full version of Ramble On, and Cas knew most of the words, and they sang off key, and Dean Winchester was in _love_. Then they’d gone to Scootie’s, a corner store near Cas’s place, to get liquor and cigarettes. Cas had wanted vodka and orange juice, so Dean paid for it, along with the six pack of beer and a pack of Newports, and then they’d gone to a headshop and he’d purchased a phallic looking bubbler. Dean preferred pipes (or handmade gravity bongs), but Cas would look good with his lips wrapped around it, so he’d shelled out the $60 for it.

The trip took a while, and Dean kept taking The Long Long Way, and they’d listened to the whole Led Zeppelin tape, and every now and then Cas would sit up and suck on his throat. Usually (but not exclusively) at redlights. And those red lights would shine down on them, shine the way it had that night at his party, when all the lights in his house had seemed so intense, and Cas was _so_ fucked up and so gorgeous.

When they got back to Castiel’s apartment, they didn’t smoke right away. Dean had just enough time to set down everything glass before Castiel pushed him so hard he’d thought he was angry with him, pushed him _hard_ into the fridge that the whole kitchen seemed to shake, and again, Cas was everywhere. He was tongues and teeth and his voice was _endlessly_ deep, and his eyes were so blue that this had to be real. Dean’s dreaming mind just wasn’t his goddamn creative, and with that knowledge he grabbed Castiel by the shoulders and shuffled him into the living room, onto the couch, pulling off Cas’s shirt, then his pants, running his hands all over his still-clammy body before he jerked him off, and fuck him if Castiel didn’t just rip his goddamn heart out and _eat it_ when he came. His eyes had gone wide, the dilation retracting, hips twitching and canting violently, and he’d just said “ _Dean_.” before he lost it.

They’d put on Twin Peaks and smoked for the rest of the night.

Friday and Saturday had been incredible. Friday and Saturday had been like watching Eve bite into the apple and realize that apples tasted a lot better than whatever shit diet she’d been on before, because Castiel _indulged_ and every time he did, his body sang. And Dean fucking _loved_ watching it, watching him realize how much he loved being high, or drunk, or in the throes of passion, and if he were totally honest with himself, that was _unquestionably_ what he loved the most.

Castiel sucked him off for the first time Friday night, and he’d been high, but for some reason, the task had given him a moment of clarity because he had that unbridled intensity when he sunk between Dean’s legs and pulled off his jeans and boxers. Dean had been on the receiving end of a _lot_ of blowies – he was still rusty and kind of awkward when he gave them, but he’d never had problems picking up girls when they were on the road, and get a girl drunk enough, she’s ready to prove that she too had something like Castiel lurking inside of her. Like Castiel being the operant phrase, because as he learned, Castiel sucked cock like he should be paid to do it. _Nobody_ should be that good at something and not get paid for it, but Cas… fuck.

Castiel took him into his mouth without teasing him first. Dean didn’t actually like that part – he was sort of into the whole slow, sexy buildup thing, but Cas apparently had no interest in it because he’d taken _all_ of Dean into his mouth, all the way down his fucking throat like it wasn’t even an issue, and he’d felt Cas’s throat contract, threatening to gag, but he’d just held very still for a moment, and then the contraction was gone. Like he’d fucking _willed it_ to go away. You do not _will away_ a fucking gag reflex, but Cas had just choked spasmotically around him for half a second before he was utterly calm again, and then he was pulling up, then bobbing back down, and Dean had let out this perfectly contented sigh and watched. Cas’s head bobbed on him, his hands holding Dean’s hips still and eyes open, utterly concentrated, tongue working all over his cock as he rode it, and if he ever pulled up to slow down, it was to suck the _hell_ out of the tip, and Dean kind of thought he was gonna fucking die every now and then.

But Cas skated the line like a fucking Olympian. Every time Dean thought he was sucking _way too fucking hard_ , or using _way too much teeth_ , or squeezing his cock so hard it was gonna just _burst_ , Cas yanked back in whatever way he needed to, letting him catch up, letting him revel in being pushed as far as he could go. Cas, whose head was bobbing between his legs, hands moving from his hips to his lower torso, which he held almost reverently, his knees shaking a little from being pressed painfully into the hardwood, and when Dean came, it was shouting Cas’s name like a curse. Cas, who just dipped forward until he was nose was pressed into pubic hair, sucking him all the way through it, swallowing everything until he finally pulled back and said “I enjoyed that, Dean.”

Cas had this way of blowing his mind.

They ran out of weed fast – Dean had only gotten a gram, and Castiel smoked him under the table each time. Even when he was so baked he couldn’t stand, Cas just asked for more, like no amount of pleasure would ever be enough. He was the same way in bed. Sure, he had a refractory period, but he usually spent it between Dean’s legs, sucking his cock, giving him handjobs, or sometimes just grinding into him so good that Dean came anyway. On his lowerback, or between his thighs, and then Cas would want to cum too, and how could Dean say no? How could he deny him anything?

So there had been more runs to his dealer. Cas gave him money, looking apologetic, and ordinarily he might have minded – he practically had a kid to support. But fuck if Cas would ask for something and Dean ever even _considered_ saying no.

He’d gone to work at points, leaving Cas a sleeping heap in his bed or a very stoned heap on his couch, but they’d both mutually understood that if Dean had to go to work, he would come back. Maybe he’d come back with food, or even just food ingredients (to his delight, he learned that when not so sick he couldn’t function, Castiel was an incredible cook), but Cas would be there when he came back. Once, he’d been on his laptop talking to his mother, and Dean had wanted to involve himself somehow, a subtle way of introducing himself to her. Maybe walk through the background, or shout something at Cas that he’d have to respond to, but Dean never did. He figured Cas’s anti-gay thing came from overly religious parents (didn’t it always?), so he’d just watched him covertly, watched the way Cas smiled, eyes full of love, laughing at her jokes and assuring her everything was alright.

He missed his mom. He missed them both.

Saturday, Dean had sobered up long enough to take them to the drive in. It was almost _too_ 1950s for him, but the fact was that he owned a classic car, and classic cars belonged in drive ins, with babes in the passenger’s seat (or better yet, the back seat) and stupid horror movies on giant screens in front of them. And just like in a 50s movie, they’d ended up in the back, both of them really too tall for it but they’d just laughed whenever one of them hit the roof, or halfway fell into the floor, and Cas had been high and happy and came into Dean’s hand the horror movie narrowed its cast down to the Final Girl. He swallowed Dean’s cum just quickly enough for him to sit up and catch the last five minutes of the film, in which she made her daring escape and managed to defeat the killer, and really, wasn’t that the most important part?

Sunday morning, Dean had been sleeping the sleep of the truly happy when Cas’s radio alarm went off. Unlike what he’d grown up hearing, various classic rock stations always shouting that _you’re listening to WK1K Classic Rock, and we’re rocking your Sunday morning with Deep Purple_ , it’d been this _creepy_ French song that yanked him out of his post coital slumber faster than he thought possible. Castiel, however, was up even faster, and Dean had groaned and grumbled and struggled to turn the thing off, and every cry of _what time is it_ went unanswered.

It wasn’t until thirty minutes later, after he’d managed to fall back into an uneasy sleep despite the song, that Cas had knocked loudly on the door and yelled for him to get up.

And then they were here. He hadn’t forced Dean to put on anything fancy, just told him to put some clothes on because it was time for church. Like _every_ college kid who spent their weekends in homosexual trysts, smoking weed and drinking like fiends, woke up at 8am on Sunday for church, but he couldn’t deny him a goddamn thing, so, keeping the grumbling to a minimum, Dean threw something on and they went to church. Dean hadn’t been to church in _years_ , since he was… maybe ten? He and Sammy had gone with Uncle Bobby because there was supposed to be an Easter Egg hunt, and Dad had been out on a job, so they’d all piled into one of Bobby’s clunkers and went to church. Then, Sammy _destroyed_ the Easter Egg hunt – the kid was a hunter after all, born and raised, and he’d had no trouble finding nearly every egg. They’d shared the loot for the rest of the day, even though Dean didn’t take part in the hunt, and while the Easter Bunny never showed, they’d eaten chocolate rabbits until they were both on the edge of throwing up. And they’d laughed the whole damn time.

And now, he was at church again. Only there wasn’t the excuse of a major holiday – it was just Sunday, any Sunday, and Cas was next to him, and Dean was reliving every moment of their weekend, and occasionally Cas would nudge his arm and get him to stand up. Every now and then, Cas would hand him a bible, because everyone else in the church had one, always open to the right page because Cas was apparently all about this Jesus stuff, and you know, it was kind of cool. Dean knew about all the worst things in the world, and on some level, he thought Cas might too. But Cas just kept on going, just kept his head bowed, blue eyes appraising the pages before darting back to the preacher, always intense. And Dean loved him, in his stupid little tie with his shirt tucked into his pants like a perfectly respectable young man, Dean loved him so much he could hardly stand it.

After church, they ran to the grocery store for some essentials, and then they went back to Cas’s place for brunch, and if Castiel cooked good dinners, it was nothing compared to breakfast. He made breakfast like he was _born_ to make breakfast – yeah, the eggs were a little overdone, and the sausage links were a little cold in the middle, but the bacon and biscuits were perfect, and when the pancakes were drowning in syrup, Dean could have sworn it was the best meal he’d had since Mary died.

* * *

 

Castiel’s high _literally_ tapered off some time Sunday evening when Dean said he had to go, because he had school the next day, and he needed to make sure Sam hadn’t thrown any wild parties while he’d been gone, and after a peaceful goodbye, the weed and liquor safely in Dean’s car where Castiel couldn’t continue to use it in his absence, he sobered up. He did all of his non art homework (his artwork he was a full _week_ behind on, and he wasn’t going to go up to the school to work at this hour), cleaned his apartment, and slept, and he slept _well_. He slept the way a man only could if he was genuinely happy, and for the first time in a very long time, Castiel felt genuinely happy. And despite that his high literally tapered off sometime around nine on Sunday, he didn’t _really_ come down from his weekend until the following Thursday.

His week was spent catching up, and while his professors all spoke to him with urgency, he never found himself getting overwhelmed. In Art Practices, his second assignment was to do a performance piece – any type of performance piece. The good news was that one couldn’t really… create performance art in a classroom. Or at least, freshman art students who’d never done performance art in their lives couldn’t – the two lessons he’d missed had apparently been 6 hours of people fuming about the assignment, or pretending like they were brainstorming in their sketchbooks when in reality they were working on other assignments, or just drawing. Perhaps a couple of students were actually showing progress, but truthfully, Castiel wasn’t far behind at all. Drawing had been moved to the Printmaking room, which Castiel appreciated – it smelled better in here, and there was more light, and to his surprise, they’d kept the old still life. Following the arrest, certain pieces of evidence were returned to the university if they hadn’t mattered that much anyway, and apparently, this had been one of those pieces that hadn’t mattered.  The only class he felt _terribly_ behind in was Painting, but he still managed to catch up. It was all about putting in the hours, and Castiel stayed after school and showed up early, working on his self-portrait or his wet-media drawings, and even sometimes trying to figure out what he would do for performance.

It wasn’t easy, but it was what he had to do, and he felt content. Dean would text him, and he could tell things were different now, and _staying_ different. The texts were flirtatious, occasionally asking him if he was free for an hour so they could get lunch, and once, when Castiel was working late in the Painting studio and Dean wasn’t working, he brought them Indian take out and they’d eaten it on the studio’s dirty floor. And there was some kissing, lips tingling in reaction to the food, and it had been good. Everything had been good. On Thursday, he’d gotten a text from Dean asking him to come over to his place, and Cas had accepted, even if his gut tugged nervously because the last time he’d gone over there, he’d apparently gotten the bubonic plague.

The good news was that he _didn’t_ get the bubonic plague again. In fact, the reason Castiel finally came crashing down from his high had nothing to do with Dean, Sam, or even himself, really. It had to do with a guy named David Orland, who was eighteen and talked too much, used more expletives in his speech than was really necessary, and had a girlfriend he always talked about, but Castiel had never met. A girlfriend named Jen, he’d said, and despite the fact that no one cared about Jen (and several of his peers probably doubted that she existed), David was always talking about her. About how amazing Jen was, about how pretty she was, and smart, and how she was getting an impressive sounding _biology_ degree. And he would tell stories no one wanted to hear about the shenanigans they’d gotten into during the weekends, and some people would laugh because David was trying so hard, but Castiel never had. He sort of regretted it now, because Jen, who in fact _was_ very pretty, was on the news. Dean and Sam were both in the living room when he’d walked in, staring at her, and she was weeping as a reporter barraged her with questions.

David Orland, a freshman Graphic Design major in his Drawing I class, was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you have it. As always, thanks for the feedback/kudos, and I'd love more if you feel up to it. Comments are awesome.


	7. Dead Man on Campus

“Cas.”

Dean’s voice ripped him out of his daze, the glass of water Sam had fetched for him remaining untouched on the coffeetable in front of him. “Cas, I know you’re kind of freaked out right now, but we need to talk.”

The news was still on in the background, but Sam had had the decency to turn it down, both of them now sitting a little too close and staring a little too intently at him. He looked up, not meeting Sam’s eyes (there was still something about him that made him uncomfortable on a baser level, but he wasn’t having flashes anymore. Memories under memories under an ocean of other memories.) but staring at Dean, and if this were a movie, this would be a break up scene. _We need to talk_ usually meant _we need to break up_ ; he’d learned that from Friends. The show, not… people. But if this were the breakup scene, Sam wouldn’t be involved, and Sam certainly wouldn’t be staring at him like he was trying to suppress his panic. “Yes. Of course.”

“Okay.” The brothers were staring at each other, as if unsure of how to proceed, and Castiel’s gaze dropped to the floor again. Cops were now talking heatedly on the TV, and reporters were asking questions like _is it true that the victim was slain in the same way as Bethany Hayworth?_ and _what will become of Charles Arias now that there’s been another killing?_ The National news stations had even taken interest – a murdered college girl was news, but _two_ murdered art students, in the same class, in the same small college town, with a wrongly arrested perpetrator was _big_ news. There was a shot of the cops crying _no comment_ before attempting to walk back into the precinct, and the press hurriedly attempting to follow, before the camera dragged back to the blonde reporter. “Okay, Cas, I don’t know how to say this, but I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

His eyes snapped back to Dean, who looked guilty, and Sam, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, and arched a brow. “Are you ready to be honest with me now? Entirely?”

Clearly this wasn’t the answer they’d expected, but Dean nodded all the same. “Yeah. Mostly because we need your help.”

His frown deepened, but he nodded.

“Okay. So you know how ghosts don’t exist?”

“Yes.”

“Well, actually you don’t. Because they do exist. In fact, pretty much everything exists.”

Castiel paused, trying to digest this information. “On what authority do you have that?”

“Uh… shit. Um.” Dean and Sam were exchanging looks, Dean looking uncomfortable and Sam making urgent faces, as if to say _just spit it out, this is your boyfriend_. Castiel wondered if Sam knew; he expected he did. They seemed awfully close. Or perhaps not, Sam had been awfully secretive about the girl he’d taken an interest to. Somehow, that information, which was grounding because it was so _simple_ , made him feel better. “Okay, so. You know how I told you my parents were dead? Don’t make that face! They are. That was 100% true. They both died on the job. We come from a very, very, very, very, _very_ long line of… well, basically Ghostbusters. If that makes this easier to understand. We’re called hunters. We go out and kill things, uh, paranormal stuff. If it kills people first. And trust me, actually-paranormal-stuff _always_ kills people.”

A sharp pain hit him between the eyes (We’ll ward this place up with everything we’ve got), less like a headache and more like a gunshot, and he yelped, slapping his hand against it as if that would make it better. One of them was asking if he was okay, and the other was asking what was wrong, and he mumbled “Do you have any aspirin?” just loudly enough for Sam to be on his feet, heading for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. A moment later, he was being handed a rattling pill bottle, and he swallowed more than he should have. Six, maybe more. He exhaled, letting them settle in his stomach for a moment and kneading his forehead, before looking up at Dean. “I don’t…” God his head hurt. “I don’t understand.” _God_ , he felt like someone was stabbing him with an _ice pick._ Only not – the pain was halfway between being outright stabbed or perhaps just having the pick slowly wriggled in, tearing and twisting, digging and burrowing until--

“It’s like this. Our mom’s side of the family had been hunters forever, and Dad married into it. We think Mom tried to quit, y’know? Once they got married and had kids. But some vamps-”

“Some _what_?” Until there was nothing left. Tearing and tearing and _tearing_.

“Vampires, Cas. You know. Blood drinking fiends of the night and all that shit? Like Dracula, only… more like 30 Days of Night, if you’ve seen that movie.” At Castiel’s blank stare, Dean threw his hands up in frustration. “You _do_ know what a vampire is, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Well. My mom.” He gestured to a framed photo on the wall. “Killed a nest of them in Tulsa. I guess she missed one, because it… came for her. When Sammy was about one and a half. Dad didn’t even know she used to be a hunter, she kept it so close to the chest. After that, he found all of her stuff in the attic. Books, journals, everything. He was obsessed with getting revenge, so we went on the road and started doing what she’d been doing. At first, it was all about finding the vamp that got her, but it took longer to do that than he’d thought. By the time we did get the bastard, I was 14 and Dad was completely dependent on this lifestyle.”

(Don’t step on that fish, Castiel. We’ve got big plans for that fish.)

The icepick that definitely _wasn’t_ in his head (except that he was fairly sure it was) was wrenched out, and white sparks dotted his vision, and for a moment he thought everything was okay before it stabbed into him again, and it was so _real_ that he cried out, clapping his hands over his eyes. “Cas?” That was Dean’s voice, Dean who had a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull away his hands so he could look at him, and he yelled as the pick was wrenched out again, breath heaving because when the pain returned, it was in his eyes. It was like he was being stabbed in the eye, and his whole body shook as he fought not to just scream, but he could literally _feel_ his eyeball splitting as the sharp pick drove through it, tearing through the tissue of his brain and cuttingcuttingcuttingcutting.

“Cas!”

Dean was yelling. Dean was pushing a glass of water to his hand, forcing him to drink it, except it wasn’t water. It was nail polish remover, it was vodka, and he choked and sputtered on it but Dean just held his mouth open and forced him to choke it down. It felt like a quadruple shot, maybe more, and it didn’t burn as much as he’d expected but the taste clung to the inside of his mouth, and Dean was yelling at him but he sounded underwater. It was happening again. (Please no.) It was **_happening again_**. (No, not again. He’d do anything. Please God, not again, nononono, he’d be good. He wouldn’t scratch. He wouldn’t scratch, please **_God_** just make it stop, not again not again--)

“Cas!”

He found his voice. “Dean.”

“Cas, the _hell_ is wrong with you man, you just started… I don’t know…”

The pain yanked out of him, sealing itself away, patching up the wall like there’d never been a hole in the first place, and his face was wet, lip trembling, but it was gone. It was gone and he wasn’t going to push it, even if every part of him _wanted to_ , because he knew there was something there. Something from a long time ago, something important, but every time he scratched, every time he toyed with it, his body couldn’t handle it. So he’d leave it alone. He’d go on with his life and he’d never scratch again, because the last time, when he’d gotten so sick he’d nearly died, it hadn’t been worth it. And it wasn’t worth it now. “A migraine. I’m sorry, Dean. It took me by surprise.” The alcohol was settling in his stomach, spreading uncomfortable, languid heat throughout his body, and the ache in his skull began to relent a little. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Cas. You just scared us.”

He’d forgotten about Sam. Sam was the one holding the liquor, asking him if he needed more, but Castiel just shook his hand, settling down lower into the seat and fanning himself. All the color in his cheeks had drained to a sickly green, and he was sweating at his hairline, but he didn’t dare touch it again. “I’m alright. Keep going.”

Dean looked uncomfortable, looking at him and then at Sam, but Sam just arched his brows and nodded towards Castiel. Resolutely, he continued. “So. This line of work we’re in, you don’t get out. You can try to retire, but sooner or later, your past catches up to you. That’s what happened to Mom, and that’s what happened to Dad. Revenge killing by another type of monster I don’t even want to go into. After Dad died, we got a call from his lawyer. I inherited everything. The car, the house, what little money he had. I should have inherited his job, too, but after we killed the thing that killed Dad…” He gave a reproachful look at Sam, who finally spoke.

“After _Dean_ killed the thing that killed Dad, and we got this place, I made him stop. It was our one chance to be normal and retire.”

“God, what _is it_ with you and normal?” Dean was yelling now, pacing around the room, and Castiel could tell this was an argument they’d had more than once. “This apple pie bullshit isn’t for us, Sammy, you know that. People are _dying_ because we’re not out there hunting.”

“There are _other hunters_ , Dean! You know that! And they’re good at what they do. But we’re _young_ , and we have a chance!”

“A chance for what? A wife, 2.5 kids, and some stupid gig at a law office? The same thing is gonna happen to us that happened to Mom. You don’t _get out_ , Sam. Sooner or later, it’ll be a vamp or a djinn or a demon, but something will show up and because you’re going soft, you’re not gonna be ready for it--”

“Excuse me.” Both Sam and Dean’s head snapped to Cas, who was holding the glass of ice to his forehead. “I’m still not sure what this has to do with me. Or why you’re telling me this now.”

“Right, right.” Sam exhaled, sitting back down on the couch, still looking a little frustrated but his attention was now focused on Castiel. “Look, I know all of this sounds crazy. Trust me, when this was our job, our number one priority was to not tell people what we did. Everyone who knows ends up getting dragged into our shit. Dean didn’t want to tell you anything, but the fact is, we need your help. And if you don’t help us, I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop this.”

“Stop _what_?” The question wasn’t directed at Sam – he was staring at Dean incredulously, a little angry that Dean wouldn’t have told him any of this if he’d had the chance. He thought of the party, how Dean had just lied to him about every detail of his family life, and he gritted his teeth. Still, that wasn’t the priority.

“You know what, Cas. Two dead kids in your class. You’ve got to help us figure out what’s going on.”

“It’s probably just some psycho-”

“It _wasn’t_ , Cas. We’ve been to the crime scenes-”

“How did you do that?”

“That’s not important. Just.” Dean grabbed him by the shoulders, holding him still and _staring_ at him. “Just listen to me, Cas. We went to the crime scenes. The first one was already totally wrecked by the cops, but we got to the second one and it didn’t make sense. The police reports said all the doors and windows had been locked from the inside. There was no way to get in there. And the body, _Jesus_. This is our kind of thing, and we’re the closest hunters in the area. I should have looked into it after the first death, but they had a perp the next day, I thought it was over.”

Castiel took a deep breath, really looking at them, and he knew he’d done this before. Something like this. He knew he’d done this before a hundred times, a thousand times, and everything they’d told him was new and yet it wasn’t. But he didn’t go further. The pain would follow, and he wasn’t ready to be incapacitated for days on end again. It had nearly killed him the first time; he’d gotten ill in every way he could have, and to say he’d felt like he’d been run over by a truck was an understatement. So he didn’t scratch. He just looked at them and nodded. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

“Questions. Really think about it. Then we’ll go from there.”

He nodded.

Sam pulled out a notebook, looking not unlike a cop in that moment, pulling out a pen and nodding to him. “Okay, Castiel. Tell me about the victims.”

“Let me preface anything I say by reminding you that I didn’t know them. I spoke to Bethany during critique, and I don’t think I ever spoke to David. But Bethany was pretty and talented, so people liked her. She had a lot of friends in that class.” He felt stupid, rattling off this information, but Sam assured him that anything, anything at all could help. “Right. She was a good artist. She liked reflective surfaces? So she mostly drew the vases and glass. David wasn’t as good as she was, I don’t even really remember his piece from the critique. And of course, I missed all last week, so I hadn’t really seen him. But on Monday and Wednesday, we were doing wet media, and he was a lot better with that than the charcoal.”

Sam nodded, continuing to take notes. “Did you notice anything weird in your class? Anyone or anything that seemed out of place, any cold spots, any time you just felt uneasy?”

He paused, trying to think. “I… don’t know. I don’t think so, Sam, I’m sorry. Our first classroom, in the basement, was a little eerie because there were no windows, but I stayed there after class quite a lot, working on the still life. I never felt threatened or uncomfortable. Once we moved to the Printmaking lab, nothing really changed. There were windows in there, so it felt more comfortable. But like I said, I never felt… wrong.”

Sam and Dean frowned, exchanging looks. “Do you remember anyone talking about feeling weird, seeing weird things, anything?”

Castiel shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t really have friends in there. But no, I don’t recall anyone mentioning anything.”

The brothers exchanged looks, and Sam pulled out his laptop, which was sitting underneath the coffeetable charging. Castiel couldn’t help but gape when he opened it – the first tab he minimized was a program monitoring police reports, the second, KU campus police reports, and the third was a Microsoft Word document full of notes. “Castiel, I have crime scene photos. I understand that you might not want to look at them, but it would _really_ help us if you would. You might be able to see something we can’t, and the police couldn’t.”

 “Yes. Okay.”

Sam slid the laptop over to him and opened up a folder full of photos for him to look at. They were positively grisly. Bethany’s once beautiful face had been smashed in, like she’d been beaten to death, and there was blood _everywhere_ , all over the Drawing room. To his horror and disgust, he could see two of her teeth sitting on the floor with an official looking police marker next to them – they were almost 10 feet from her corpse. The next few photos were of the drawing classroom, and he stared and stared, trying to find something he hadn’t seen before. But it all looked the same. Well, apart from it being covered in blood; all of their chairs were in the right place, the still life sat in the center of the room, and all the little knickknacks seemed to be accounted for. “I can’t be completely sure, but everything looks… I don’t want to say normal. But nothing looks out of place.” He frowned. “At least in the first scene.”

He skipped ahead – there were a few detail shots of her body, and one shot of her drawing, before the scene changed to the Printmaking lab. Similarly, David’s body looked like it had been beaten severely; his face was almost unrecognizable, and there was blood everywhere. Castiel felt sick, and he must have looked it, because Dean was pressing a glass of actual water into his hand, encouraging him to drink it. He was less acquainted with the printmaking lab, having only had two classes there and a limited number outside hours, but just like the other scene, it seemed normal. There was a chair overturned – the chair David had been in, from the placement of his discarded drawing board, and as he went from photo to photo, he felt frustrated. Sam and Dean were counting on him, staring at him with a hint of desperation in their eyes, _needing_ him to help. And he couldn’t see anything. The last photo was a shot of David’s drawing, still taped to his drawing board and blood splattered in the corner, and his stomach nearly bottomed out at that. He drained the glass of water, trying to settle it.

This was a little too real for him.

“I don’t know. It looks right. I mean, I’ve only been in that lab a few times, but nothing seems out of place.”

Dean cursed, dropping into an easy chair, and Sam nodded, assuring him it was okay, pulling out folders of his own and looking through them. But Castiel just stared at the drawing. It was good – no, it was _very_ good; David had spent the last few minutes of his existence ironing out visual decisions, really getting into the still life. His first piece had been so dark and smudged, with a terrible composition and no pride, but this? David would have done well as a watercolorist. His tonal gradation was subtle, his understanding of lights and shadows was mature, and the reflective quality he’d captured in the vases and glass surfaces was just stunning.

He flipped the image over, rotating it counter clockwise; it was just one of those things artists did. It was all about challenging compositions, seeing if the way the artist saw things was really the most compelling way for a piece to be viewed, and suddenly, it was as clear as day.

“Dean.”

“Yeah, Cas?” Dean was sitting in the easy chair looking exhausted, sipping on a glass of whiskey.

“Look at this.”

There was a woman in the glass. Right side up, it was just shapes, abstracted reflections that made no sense, but David had really looked at them. Tried to get them right, with no understanding of what they were. Upside down, in loose washes of black ink, her form was unmistakeable. Castiel’s mouth went dry. He pulled up Bethany’s piece, so carefully rendered in charcoal, and now that he knew what he was looking for, he felt stupid for having never seen her before. Because in Bethany’s piece, she was much clearer.

Standing in the reflection of a bulbous vase was a woman with no face.

* * *

 

Castiel didn’t know why he’d come. He wasn’t a part of this, not really. He wasn’t a hunter, and he didn’t want to have his head beaten so severely that his face was unrecognizeable, but they’d dragged him into this, and he couldn’t drag himself out. Bethany and David had been just _dead_ before, murdered. Now, having seen what had been done to them, everything was different. They would never be just _dead_ again – they’d been slaughtered. Their teeth had been smashed out of their faces, their blood stained the floors of the art department, and now that he really _understood_ , he was involved. Dean had argued with him; tried to get him to stay behind (in a salt line, just to make sure) because Cas would just slow them down, but he’d gotten into the backseat of the Impala all the same.

When they arrived at the school, Dean gave him a backpack that had a sawed off shotgun, a bag of salt, and a fireplace poker inside. When he asked what to do with these objects, Dean had gruffly told him he wasn’t gonna do shit, because he was staying in the car. Sam had told him that if he was attacked, any one of these objects would hold it off for a few moments, but nothing would kill it except burning the remains.

“Then where are the remains?”

“I don’t know, somewhere in the school. We already checked records, local lore, everything. Nobody ever died in that building, the land isn’t cursed, there were never any battles there, nothing. A couple of students have died here, but they all died the way you’d expect. Drunk driving, alcohol poisoning, one suicide, but that was in a dorm across campus.”

“And that’ll kill a ghost? Cremation?”

“Essentially, yeah.”

Castiel frowned. “But where do they go?”

Sam let out a dry laugh, loading his shotgun as Dean barreled toward the school. “That is a theological question none of us are qualified to answer.”

Breaking in to the school was easier than Castiel had expected. It was well past midnight, and all the press and police were at home, reeling from the day’s events. The body was safely in the morgue, the printmaking lab had been taped off and locked, and that might have stopped (or at least severely slowed down) Castiel, but not Sam and Dean. They picked the lock to the main doors into the building in about ten seconds, and disabled the alarm system for the rest of the building in under a minute. Picking the lock to the printmaking lab had been fairly simple too, and as they were cutting through the tape, he felt a deep sense of dread. There was no going back from this.

Quietly, they shut the door behind them, turning on flashlights and looking around the large lab. The blood had yet to be cleaned up, and the room smelled foul, but he kept his stomach in check, trying not to focus on the idea that someone had died here. Someone had had their face beaten _in_ by a monster, and they were here now, looking for it. If Sam and Dean were telling the truth earlier, and unfortunately he had no reason to doubt them, then they could handle this. They would kill it. The thought made him a bit ill – could a ghost go to heaven? Could a ghost who never killed anyone in life, but killed in the afterlife, go to heaven? Or would it go to hell? Or was there some other place entirely for all the non-human souls that die? He shivered, pulling his trenchcoat around himself.

“Dean. Look at this.”

Sam was standing next to the still life.

“Wha- is that a _real_ skeleton? Cas, what the hell?”

He flinched. “What?”

“You didn’t think to mention that there is a _real skeleton_ in your classroom?”

“Why would that matter?”

Dean threw his hands up, letting out a noise of frustration, dropping his backpack next to the still life and beginning to unpack. He frowned. “Because,” Sam was speaking now, pulling out a bag of salt and dropping it in a line around the table with the still life. “Ghosts are usually attached to things. They focus on something and can’t let it go, which is why they don’t move on. Most of the time it’s a place, rarely it’s an object, but in this case, it’s safe to bet it’s the remains. Don’t you watch scary movies?”

“Yes, I do. But I… it just never occurred to me. I thought if someone donated their body to science, they wouldn’t be angry about it.”

Dean barked a laugh, unscrewing a canister of lighter fluid and dumping it all over the still life. “Yeah, don’t be so sure. It makes sense that the spirit would go vengeful; most skeletons that end up as medical props are taken without consent. They’re usually Native American or Chinese. I saw a whole thing on it on CNN."

Sam nodded, finishing the salt line around the table. “There is lore about spirits who attack those who capture them in photos because they don’t want to be seen. Maybe this one didn’t want to be drawn. Cas, there should be an override switch on the fire alarm next to you. Can you disable it? We can’t have it going off while we’re doing the burn.”

Castiel stood by the door, tightening his coat around himself, an unholy _cold_ pulsing through him in a way that made him need to shiver desperately. He let out a breath, and it was visible as he exhaled, and he managed to say “Dean!” before she appeared.

She was awful. Her skin was dark, eyes furious and teeth bared, body broken from the way she walked and massive indentions in her cheeks and the top of her head, and he’d been rooted to the spot for just a moment before her hand stretched out toward him, and then he _ran_. He felt something hit the back of his head as he pushed through the door, and for a moment, white sparked his vision, and he could feel something warm and wet staining the back of his trenchcoat, but he never stopped. He didn’t care about making noise – he took off out of the print lab, feet thundering on the tile floor as he barreled down the hall, down the stairs, out the front door, and Castiel just kept running. He ran and ran and ran until his blood felt like acid, pumping through him and eating away at his muscles and organs, and then he _kept_ running. He ran past four churches before he realized that was where he wanted to be, but he didn’t dare double back, so he just kept running.

He finally found one – a little white building that could hardly be called a church at all, except for the sign outside that announced that mass was at 9 and 11 on Sundays, and that Jesus loved him. The doors were locked. It was past two and that wasn’t surprising, but he jogged around back, panting for breath, looking for any open door.

He didn’t find one, but the backdoor was so old that he managed to break the lock open, kicking it in and running inside, running until he found the area where people prayed, collapsing in front of an image of the crucified Christ and struggling to catch his breath. He didn’t know how long he’d been running. He didn’t know if Sam and Dean had managed to kill her, and when he finally put a hand to the back of his head, he was still bleeding.

He felt sick.

“Father.” He rarely prayed out loud, but he prayed now, clutching the back of his skull, trying to fight back the nausea that threatened to overtake him. “Heavenly Father. Forgive me, for I have sinned. Please watch over Sam and Dean Winchester tonight. I do not… I do not know for certain, but I feel they are important to your-” He was vomiting before he even realized what was happening – it was a nasty cream color, and he choked, spitting it onto the carpeted floors and wiping his eyes of the tears that had formed on reflex. “To your plan. Please God, give me strength. Give me guidance, Father. Please.”

His head hurt, it hurt in the back where it felt like he’d been smashed with a lead pipe, and now it hurt in the front too, it hurt everywhere, and he _screamed_ because there was no one there to hear him, covering his ears because it felt like the building was shaking, or maybe that was just his brain swelling and pressing against the sides of his skull. (So, have you found God yet? No, not yet.) The noise, God, the noise. It was low, lower than he was ever supposed to hear, and then it was shrill and high, a steady ring in his ears, and he wondered briefly if he was deaf. In movies, whenever someone went deaf, this was the sound they used to represent that, but he could still hear himself screaming. (I’m always happy to bleed for the Winchesters.)

The chapel is a garden, then it’s a street (We had an appointment.), then it’s a room with horrible wallpaper, then he’s on the floor and the chapel is itself again, and God’s son is staring down at him, sculpted lifelessly from wood, and Castiel _screams_ because he’s all too much suddenly. He’s too much for his body, and he’s tearing at himself, gripping his head and wishing he could just _tear his skin off_ to let it all out, and he could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket but he can’t get to it. He couldn’t stand, and this was it, wasn’t it? This was death. He was going to die here on the floor of a church he’d never been to, one he’d broken into around 2:30 Friday morning, he was going to just lay here and scream until God took pity and finally just took him. Father forgive him for his sins, please forgive him, forgive him _everything_ and please, don’t cast him into hell. He’d tried, he’d tried.

(Freedom is the length of a rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.)

He screamed, and he was surrounded by the dead, his brothers and sisters in the most beautiful place he’d ever been, and it was agony, it was worse than anything he’d ever experienced, and then he was on the floor again, scratching at his hair, and his phone was vibrating and the sound was so loud, he was so damn _aware_ of it. And it was Dean, DeanDeanDean, Dean who was probably the most important human soul on the planet (I’m not a hammer, as you say. I have questions. I have doubts.), and everything ached, everything burned, everything was razors cutting his skin off and freeing something huge, something bright, something massive that he didn’t want but all the same, wanted desperately, and he hated it, he hated every moment of it, and it took all the willpower he had to pull his phone out of his pocket and slide to answer it, and when he did, he was panting. Starving for air.

(I am the one gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.)

“Dean.”

Without warning, the wall in Castiel’s mind crumbled.

“Cas?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearing the home stretch. I've got most of chapter 8 written, and then there's the last chapter and the epilogue. So we're winding down. I pretty much shit this fic out - I was on a massive writing binge and still am. However, it'll probably take a while for the last chapters to get posted; my computer is on its last leg, and I'll be sending it for repairs pretty soon. To the few people who've been reading and following this, thank you! Please leave some feedback c:


	8. A Beautiful Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was slow, quiet foreplay – the sun was rising, pouring more and more light into Dean’s messy room, and Cas’s dilated pupils were staring up at him with that unique I-love-you-but-we-can’t-be-together-because-I’m-an-angel-and-I’m-from-another-universe-and-I’m-waiting-for-God-so-would-you-hurry-up-and-fuck-me resentment that one so rarely encounters in every day life.

Castiel disappeared after that night.

Dean had looked everywhere. Around 2:45am, they’d found the church Castiel had ran to – it had taken some finagling, but Sam, the little geek, had managed to do some tech-crap so Cas’s phone told them where he was. And when they’d pulled up to one of those churches that was so small you could only expect it was full of crazy religious zealots who did suicide pacts via poisoned Kool-Aid, Cas hadn’t been there. There was blood on the floor – a _lot_ of it, and Cas’s phone, and he’d been fucking panicked by then. The bitch in the art building was one of the most violent ghosts they’d ever encountered – in an attempt to play the hero and save Castiel, Dean had run out of the salt line chasing after him, and the bitch had gotten three or four really good hits before Sam burned her to ashes. He was concussing, and had a couple of broken ribs, but that didn’t stop him from chasing Castiel everywhere he could think.

The little church had been first. Then Cas’s apartment. At first, the fact that Castiel’s tiny little place showed no signs of rushed packing had been soothing to him – it had assured him that Cas was still in town. So they’d gone to their house, and he hadn’t been there either. So they went to hospitals – every damn hospital in Lawrence, but Cas hadn’t gone to any of them. Dean was getting desperate. It was Friday, and Sammy had school, so after four hours of searching and no sleep, he dropped the kid off and continued his own search. He called his drug dealer, and no, Cas hadn’t shown up there looking for weed. He went back to Cas’s place again, just to double check, but it looked the same. No sign he’d been there. Dean took his computer, maybe Sam could do something with it.

At 24 hours, Dean walked into the police station and reported him missing. Sam had been working on Castiel’s computer, emailing his professors, looking for friends he might have gone to see, but everyone he contacted came up empty. Dean was speeding towards Destiny all the same, calling everyone in Cas’s addressbook except his mother – he was going to handle her in person. But no one had seen him. It was like he’d just disappeared.

Castiel’s emergency information was in his phone, and that was how he found his old address. Destiny reminded him of all those creepy little one-stoplight towns he’d been to when he, Sammy, and Dad had been on the road. He’d considered donning some sort of disguise – dressing up as a big time Policeman from Lawrence probably would have been quite impressive, but he couldn’t. Not with Cas. Cas was different – he wasn’t just some missing person. He was _Cas_. And people like Castiel don’t just _disappear_ , no matter how damn spooked they were by ghosts. They were predictable. And if there was any place Cas would be, it would be with his mom.

He got a hotel room for the night, exhausted from the drive, and was on Amelia Novak’s doorstep at 8am the next morning. The house was on the corner of Archer and Main Street, and it had yellow shutters and a blue door, and the garden was full of life, and damnit if it wasn’t everything he’d expected. It was small, but beautiful, and there were rockers on the porch, windchimes and flowers hanging from the support beams, and it broke his heart a little. Amelia looked almost nothing like Castiel – blonde hair, dark eyes, no features he could harken back to him,  but when he’d asked her if she’d seen or heard from her son in the past twenty four hours, she’d burst into tears. Mother’s intuition and all of that – she’d told him that from the moment she heard his car pull up, she’d known something was wrong.

She sobbed, inviting him in through her tears, bringing him sweet tea, and he wanted to be comforting but he didn’t know how.

“I’ll find him, Mrs. Novak. I promise.”

The interior of the house was halfway between Carrie and The Stepford Wives. Most of the wall decorations were religious in some way; giant crosses, crucified christs, framed quotes from the bible, or Cas’s artwork, which usually featured biblical angels preforming miracles. Every now and then, there were framed photos, of a four year old Castiel on Christmas, smiling with all his teeth and his bright blue eyes, surrounded by family. There were school pictures, Castiel never really going through an awkward phase – he was a child, and then he was a young man, and while his smile seemed to be wane a little bit in each photo, fuck if seeing each one didn’t make Dean want to find him even more. Castiel’s mom let him look around when she found out he was _Dean_. Yes, Cas had told her all about Dean, how he was his best friend and how Dean had taken such good care of him during his adjustment to University, and while he looked around, she fixed him lunch.

He didn’t find any clues in Castiel’s bedroom. There were no journals that conveniently spelled out where he would go if he decided to run away, no revealing letters, no bus tickets showing where he’d been before, nothing. Over lunch, he asked Cas’s mother a couple questions, eating her food and reassuring her that everything would be okay, when in reality he wasn’t sure at all. He didn’t know. Castiel had never made sense to him – every time he pegged something down on the guy, he went around and proved him wrong. And he missed him, _fuck_ , he missed him. Castiel was kind of stunning. Kissing him was like sucking face with a battery – raw energy, burning his lips, numbing his tongue, electrocuting him without warning, but it was always so good – _Cas_ was so good. Cas was all smeared paint, bedside bibles, vodka and orange juice, Sour Diesel and OG Kush, paint thinner and charcoal and Dean’s heart was breaking, he missed him so much.

When he was positive Castiel wasn’t there, he left Amelia his contact information and returned to Lawrence. Again, he searched everywhere Castiel would go, and plenty of places he wouldn’t, and it began to dawn on him that Cas might have been kidnapped. Might be dead.

Despite the fact that the ghost was dead, as far as the public knew, the killer of David Orland and Bethany Hayworth was still at large, which worked to his advantage. He sent a tip to Lawrence’s major news station about Castiel, and a few hours later, it was all over the news that a _third_ student from that Drawing class was missing. Within an hour, it was on every major news station in America; a serial killer picking off art students, all from the same class, all in the same small University in the same collegetown, and Dean felt proud of himself then. His father had always told him to keep cops in the dark, but this was good. He was using them. It bit him in the ass later when he ended up being questioned at the precinct, but they let him go once his boss confirmed an alibi for the first murder and Sammy gave an alibi for the second.

The Feds got involved after that. The _real_ FBI almost never got involved, even with strangely specific serial killings (or so they thought), like this. Dean was delighted. If the feds were involved, surely they’d find Cas. They had access to millions of surveillance tapes all over the country, and with Castiel’s face plastered on every news station, surely _they’d_ find him. But hours turned into days, and days turned into weekends, and weekends turned into weeks, and he never showed up. Every day, Dean would drop by the police station, asking about it, or making calls to Agent Philip and Agent Smith, but every day, there was no news. Agent Philip eventually broke it to him that if they hadn’t found him by now, Castiel had either left the country or was to be presumed dead, and since Castiel had never been registered for a passport and his bank accounts remained unaffected, he was probably the latter.

Dean never listened. How could he?

Sammy kept him motivated. When September became October, Dean was spending all his time on his computer, trying to scrape up anything, _anything_ , and Sammy was there, urging him forward. Sammy was there, pushing him to study and not drop out, and while they fought about it almost constantly, he _did_ study. And he didn’t drop out. His grades dropped, but he never failed, because Sammy kept telling him that eventually Cas would come back and everything would be okay again, so he needed to keep his shit together for when that day came. Just keep it together, that was all he was asking. Dean had taken in Castiel’s kitten (temporarily of course), and its growth was a reminder of how long Cas had been gone. Every day at Mia got larger was a day Cas had yet to return.

Eventually, the news coverage tapered. Castiel Novak was now missing, presumed dead. The original suspect had long since been released, and there was no one now, no one to blame. If it was some kind of ghost curse, put on Castiel before he’d taken off like a bat out of hell, it hadn’t affected Dean. And she’d beaten the shit out of him – his torso hurt like hell when he did pretty much _anything_. Sammy had done some research on spirit curses to placate him, but that had been a dead end too. Castiel was just _gone_. Like he’d vanished into thin air. But people didn’t just _disappear_ , he’d spent his whole life hunting and he knew that. People got possessed by demons, eaten by wendigos, turned by vampires, drugged by djinn. But they didn’t just _disappear_ , and there was nothing, _nothing_ in that church that told him where Cas might have gone.

It was starting to drive him a little crazy.

Then, a week before Halloween, Castiel had returned.

Dean cried – he hadn’t mean to, and he’d felt like such a fucking girl and _really, Deanna, let’s go get our nails done and talk about our periods_ and all that shit, but Castiel had simply walked through his front door, and he looked eons older. His eyes, which had always tilted up when he smiled, were blank, and when Dean threw his arms around him and pulled him close, Cas didn’t seem to know what to do.

“Where have you _been_ , Cas?”

Cas’s eyes dropped to the floor as Dean pulled away from him. “Thinking.”

And Dean might have punched the little shit – hell, a huge part of him wanted to just scream at him, shove him and hit him and make him feel every pain Dean felt while Castiel was out _thinking_ , but he could tell something was wrong. Something was really, _really_ wrong; Castiel was alive. A live Castiel, who never missed church on Sunday, skype-called his mom every night, and texted Dean every day had _disappeared_. Never spent any money, never packed his clothes, left his cell phone, laptop, everything. And he never came back for any of it. “Cas. _Jesus_ , Cas, tell me where you’ve been. No – call your mom, she thinks you’re dead. _Then_ tell me where you’ve been.”

“No, Dean.” Dean’s head snapped up, staring at him incredulously, but Castiel’s face remained stony. “I’m not calling Amelia. It’s better if she thinks me dead.”

“ _What_? Why?”

“Because I am not her child. I am a child of the Lord.”

Dean gripped his shoulders, but Cas didn’t even seem to react. It was like he didn’t understand anymore. “What does that _mean_ , Cas?”

“It means I am an angel. I am a warrior for God.” At Dean’s stony, disturbed expression, Castiel smiled. And it didn’t make him feel okay, fuck, Dean Winchester might never feel okay again because it was the smile of someone _insane_. “Don’t worry, Dean. This is good. Everything is going to be okay now. I’m going back to where I belong.”

Panic shot through him. If Cas thought he was an angel, and angels belonged in heaven, did that mean he’d shown up because the voices had told him to kill himself? He stared at Castiel, eyes widening, then flicking to each of the exits. He had rope in the closet. He could tie him up, call Sam, figure out what to do. They weren’t gonna commit Cas – something spiritual happened to him, so they’d fucking fix it. He knew some psychics, people who could look at him, figure out what was wrong, and so his plan was formed. He gave Castiel an appraising glance, trying to figure out if he’d put on any muscle in his absence, but he looked utterly the same. Not thinner, or sicker, just _different_. “Right, Cas. Listen, buddy, let’s just talk. Okay? Before you go. I need answers.”

“Of course, Dean.” That caught him off guard. Castiel turned and sat down in the same chair he’d panicked in weeks ago, the same chair he’d seen those pictures in, seen a ghost in. “I’ll answer any of your questions until he gets here. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not here to see you.”

His chest jerked painfully. “Who, _Sam_?”

“Of course not. I’m here to see God.”

Dean paused. For a moment, he’d just wanted to grab Cas’s shoulders and shake him, as if shaking him would force whatever mental illness had festered in his beautiful mind, but he held himself in check. “Right. Of course.” He couldn’t bite back the snark in his voice, but Castiel didn’t seem to notice, just staring at him expectantly. Dean pulled his phone out, sending Sam a quick text telling him to get home _now_ , and sat down across from him. He wanted to keep this civil. If Castiel was cursed, or maddened by some kind of paranormal illness, they had a chance at fixing it. It could be a cursed object, or a witch’s spell, or a wraith, it could be a million things. It wasn’t demonic possession; Castiel had walked over a saltline and through a Devil’s Trap to get through the door, but there were endless possibilities. The worst possibility of all (and the most likely) being that Castiel was simply insane.

“Okay, Cas. Okay. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me why you left.”

By the time Sam arrived, Castiel had ironed out the finer details of his delusion. It made Dean feel ill, but he listened, smiled, just trying to keep him there. Castiel was hard to keep focused – although he seemed utterly resolute in his decision, he could easily be distracted mid sentence, if his enthusiasm for the subject were enough. He could talk endlessly about his love for his father (the father who left, Dean had asked, and Castiel had just laughed and said _of course not, my father is God_ ), for his brothers and sisters, and how much he longed to be with them again in heaven. But even more strange than that was that Castiel seemed convinced that nothing he was experiencing was reality; that this was just a possible reality that God had split away from time, allowing it to play out. And that seemed to anger him, frighten him – he spoke with such genuine urgency when he said he needed to get back to his real timeline, because they needed him. When they asked _who_ , Castiel just looked at them and said ‘Sam and Dean Winchester.’

Every now and then, they took a break from talking to him, regrouping in the kitchen and making coffee and trying to make _sense_ of it, and Sam would give him this Look. Dean wanted to beat the shit out of him for it, because that Look was Sam trying to silently tell Dean to call the police. Someone, _anyone_ who could take Cas away, lock him up in a padded room and swallow the key while poor Castiel sang endlessly of his love for angels, love for God. Nevermind his love for Amelia, who might as well not even _exist_ to him anymore – in Castiel’s words, “She will be fine without me. It is regrettable, but there are more urgent matters to attend to.” Nevermind that he’d only known _Dean_ for a few weeks, and Castiel had come to him, only him. Stared at him with such reverence, such love, and it killed him.

He drank his coffee Irish, and they kept talking. God continued to not-show; Castiel didn’t seem particularly bothered by this, as late turned in to later, then very late, then very early. He just sat in his chair, talking and talking, occasionally getting up to use the lavatory, or take a drink. Each time he did, he looked strangely embarrassed, and when Sam finally asked, Castiel confessed that angels didn’t have to eat, sleep, or relieve themselves, and he found it a little humiliating to be stooped to that. Dean thought of Cas, _his_ Cas, writhing in ecstacy underneath him as Dean sucked his cock, and he wondered if Cas found those memories equally humiliating. He assumed so.

Sam went to bed around seven in the morning. Dean wanted to – he was tired, and so was Castiel, who was _not_ an angel despite his namesake, _not_ a near-immortal heavenly body who was waiting for God to come to their house, and _not_ doing this HP Lovecraft alternate dimensions crap right now. He wasn’t. He was human. He was human and insane and they were going to figure this shit out, or die trying.

 At eight AM, Dean invited him to bed. Cas frowned, looking at the digital clock, and then at the door with a defeated exhale, before following him. And it truly _had_ been the last thing he’d expected – Cas was off the deep end, Cas kept looking at him with a combination of adoration and disappointment, Cas was disgusted by his need to eat and sleep – but once Dean shut the door, Castiel was kissing him.

He enjoyed it for a moment; he didn’t _fly_ into it, all teeth and tongue and pent up rage, he just enjoyed it. For a moment. And then he remembered why Castiel was even here, remembered everything he’d said, remembered the weeks of absence, the complete lack of contact, the complete lack of _anything_ , and he wanted to throw him off, grab his handcuffs and make sure he couldn’t leave. Maybe cuff him to the pipes running from the bathroom sink into the wall – it was an old house, back when things were built to last, and since Castiel was human, albeit mentally ill, he couldn’t break it and run off again. He wanted to call Amelia and tell her that he’d finally done it, found her baby, found him _alive_ , because nothing was more important than family, and a broken Castiel would be the greatest gift anyone had ever given her if Dean called her now. He wanted to do all of those things, but he was tired, and selfish, and when Castiel pulled him into bed, kissing him like it was the most important thing he’d ever do, Dean surrendered.

Things were different now, neither of them had to say it; in Dean’s mind, he was saying goodbye, because they’d either exorcise the madness out of him or send him to the state, but either way, it’d never be the same. In Castiel’s mind, there were saying goodbye, because it was. It was the last thing he was going to do in this timeline, and after his Father straightened this out, he could go home. And everything would be normal again, okay again. Either way, it was goodbye.

He tried to make it good. He wasn’t really sure if it was – Dean was only half there, choking back the hysteric sadness and masking it with a fuck, but he wasn’t going to let Cas know he was doing anything wrong. That anything was really wrong. So he kissed him hard and feverish, touching him all over, pulling him out of his clothes – out of that _trenchcoat_ , the same one he’d been wearing when they first met, and Dean thought he might keep it. No matter what the outcome. No, he’d give it to Amelia – he was taking so much from her already, she deserved at least that. But he’d keep Cas’s tie, which he was yanking off of him, and maybe his belt too, and fuck if all he’d ever wanted was to keep _Cas_ , but he was slipping. Slipping like Mary when he was six (and three quarters), who had her throat torn open and her blood drained in a revenge killing for a case she’d wrapped up over ten years ago. Slipping like John, who fell under a Siren’s song because it had looked _just like her_ , and he’d been so drunk, and they hadn’t realized that’s what they were hunting yet.

Once their clothes were off, Cas opened up for him, like something wild and massive unfurling itself in all of its glory, and Dean felt comparatively small. Cas wasn’t much bigger than him _really_ , if he even was at all – Dean was certainly bulkier, even if he was a couple of inches shorter, but Castiel’s madness was _gigantic_. Like a creature in its own right, touching him under Cas’s fingers, unfamiliar in some ways but utterly familiar in others. It made him feel ill, but he knew that regardless of what happened, this was probably it. This was probably the Last Time, and then Dean would add Castiel’s name to the evergrowing list of failed relationships, although this one would take the cake for being the weirdest. College boyfriend suffers paranoid delusions with religious psychosis after seeing a ghost. He’d cry if he were the type who cried – his Cas was already gone, and this person… he didn’t even know him. This Castiel kissed him stiffly, like he didn’t know what he was doing, with a false kind of aggression underneath it, like he was imitating what he used to do. What he knew Dean liked. Kissing him had all the tenderness and sensuality of kissing a ten year old – it felt _wrong_ , wrongwrongwrong, and every time he thought about pulling away and just telling Castiel to go to bed, a dirty little voice would remind him.

(Last. Time.) 

But even if Castiel kissed him differently, he kissed him desperately. He was trying, clutching at him, dragging him close and yanking him back like a tidal wave, and Dean let himself disappear under cold water. Salt water.

Castiel.

They’re not loud. Sam would never have to know – Dean knew he’d get a stern look from him if he did, a look that said _how dare you sleep with him when he’s too delusional to make decisions, if that’s not illegal that’s at least evil_. Especially since Cas had that whole We Can’t Have Sex thing. But despite apparently reaching a nirvana full of crazy, Cas had ditched the whole no sex before marriage crap pretty fast – the clothes came off, and Castiel was all over him. Gripping his neck, his shoulders, arms, grinding against him, grappling for his groin and always, _always_ touching him somewhere. Dean was a little awkward with him, clashing teeth a couple times, having to switch hands when he jerked Castiel off and dropping the fat bottle of lubricant in his sock drawer twice before he finally started fingering him. Castiel didn’t like it much – he didn’t dissolve into a puddle of desperate, sane, sexy, _old_ Castiel when Dean scissored his fingers, kneading his prostate and squeezing his cock. There wasn’t much disappointment left for Dean to feel when he realized this – Cas looked uncomfortable, like he couldn’t decide what he was feeling, and for the tenth time he almost called it off. And for the tenth time, he didn’t. Dean Winchester was weak on a biblical level. He always was.

He worked Castiel up regardless of the discomfort – Cas wasn’t particularly vocal about how he was feeling, but eventually, if the little twitches of his knees and hips meant anything (and it did, he knew it did) Cas loosened up and started to like it. It was slow, quiet foreplay – the sun was rising, pouring more and more light into Dean’s messy room, and Cas’s dilated pupils were staring up at him with that unique I-love-you-but-we-can’t-be-together-because-I’m-an-angel-and-I’m-from-another-universe-and-I’m-waiting-for-God-so-would-you-hurry-up-and-fuck-me resentment that one so rarely encounters in every day life. It annoyed him so much that he fished an ancient dental dam out of his sock drawer (a freebee from the annual campus safe sex seminar, where he could get a year’s worth of condoms and lube for free) and ate him out for a while. Castiel protested a little at first, telling him that he didn’t have time to extend this much longer, but after a few minutes he was sweating everywhere, shaking, grinding onto Dean’s tongue and gripping the sheets like he was trying to hold his atoms together.

Dean tried to wind it out as long as possible. Every time Cas got close to orgasm he’d pull back, wind him back down, introduce a little pain to counteract the pleasure, and if someone did this shit with _him_ he’d hate it, but Cas endured. He tossed the dental dam when Cas was so stretched out Dean could probably fuck him with no resistance, and Castiel let out an exhausted noise, shaking thighs spreading widely in front of him as Dean rolled a condom on. He looked so debauched, so _sad_ , and Dean sort of hated himself as he pressed inside, and there wasn’t _no_ resistance per se, but Dean had filled him so full of lube and stretched him out so well that Castiel didn’t even flinch. Just gasped, watching him, staring at him unblinkingly, and Dean found himself looking away, slightly intimidated by the abrasiveness of such a gaze. You don’t _do_ that, just look at someone like that during sex, but Cas did – he watched him like he knew _everything_ , and Dean couldn’t do it, so he just found a spot on Cas’s collarbone to focus on as he pulled out almost all the way, slamming forward and earning an appreciative sound from the man underneath him.

Cas used to fuck like a fairy on acid. It was never this quiet, and he was never this submissive, except that he is now and Dean kind of hates it. Not enough to stop, but he hates it, the way he hates waking up early after a night of drinking, walking around with a gassy hangover and salivating the way you do when you’re about to vomit, only he never does. He hates the soft way Castiel meets his thrusts, hates the way he’s staring, hates the sweet little moans and the innocent, trembling way he cums when Dean plows into his prostate and jerks him off, and _hates_ the way Cas looks at him and says “I enjoyed that, Dean.” It’s stiff and rigid and it’s not right. More than anything, he hates himself when he cums too, filling the condom in a soggy, uncomfortable way that reminds him how fucking awful this has been while not actually being awful sex.

He’s busy pondering that, laying in bed while Cas gets dressed, when time literally stops.

God is knocking at the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this was depressing. Really depressing. Before anyone asks, that was supposed to be a really, really unsatisfying sex scene. There will probably be a better one later. TWO CHAPTERS LEFT. REALLY REALLY EXCITED ABOUT WRITING THE NEXT ONE, the next one is pretty much what this whole fic has built up to. To the few people who've been reading this, thank you! Please leave some feedback (:


	9. Senseless

Remembering his old life was exhausting.

Anna had been so calm when she’d remembered – she’d kept it together, simply imparting the information as if it was of no great import, and then recovering her grace. Perhaps it was easy for her because she existed on the same _plane_ as her grace, or perhaps it was easier for her because she was simply better; he didn’t know. But it was exhausting. Castiel was older than _Earth_ ; millions of years worth of memories and information had been imparted to him in an instant, in his very human brain, and for the first week or so after he made his escape, all he did was eat, sleep, and think. He lived as Dean had taught him in the past – out of motel rooms that took cash and didn’t ask for a photo ID, hustling pool and using fake credit cards, and while it had been difficult once the FBI had gotten involved and his face was on every television in the country, it wasn’t impossible. He was smart, and intelligence could hide him forever if he didn’t want to be found.

It was a strange thing to know something. Even stranger, perhaps, that information could be stored in an organ, which could recall said information by itself. When Castiel remembered, it wasn’t as if millions of years of memories played before his eyes – Angels have almost eidetic memory, and the accuracy and tiny details of his memories would have taken over a thousand years to play before his eyes, even if he was recalling things at top speed. No, it was just that the information was there - the way one transfers files from hard drive to hard drive. Just because the data is on the computer doesn’t mean it’s being used, and sifting through eons of memories, trying to piece together his old life with his incredible (but limited) brain was exhausting, and it would probably take the rest of his human life.

Still, even with massive holes, he understood most of what mattered. He knew what he was, who _Dean_ was, and he knew there was important work to do in his real timeline. But this wasn’t it. Everything was wrong – here, the apocalypse had never happened. Dean never went to hell, the first seal was never broken, and angelic presence was virtually nonexistent. Which made his predicament even more difficult. Sifting through his mind, reaching into the outer limits of his memories and trying to recall spells to summon angels, or bend time, were virtually impossible for him. His mind was an endless, unmarked library – to find summoning spells, he had to find the memory of learning it, and there was _so much_. Memory was a strange thing because _trying_ actively to remember something lost is virtually impossible, but any memory can be recovered with the right stimulation, and that had been his task. Jogging his memory. He’d read the bible over a dozen times, endless books on every subject, and certain words or scenarios would jog things back and they would play like short films in his mind, ever revealing.

It had taken weeks for him to finally realize that the answer rested with the source. The only source, of everything. The kind of power it would take to erase his memories, strip him of his grace, get him to Earth without him falling, and get him to this particular world only rested with one entity in all of creation.

An entity that was currently standing on Dean Winchester’s porch.

Castiel was an angel. Or at least he was before – he didn’t know _what_ he was now, because angels, while being sentient, were not supposed to _feel_. They weren’t really even supposed to think – simply obey. And yet in his short life as a human, all he could ever remember doing was feeling; a constant buzzing of powerful, intense emotions that ruled all of his decisions and actions. So it was with this in mind that he felt so much knowing that God was here, _now_ , after what felt like ages. Eons. His father, whom he loved more than life itself, whom he loved more than Dean and every angel in Heaven, his _father_ had answered his prayers. (It had been in a dream he was having, about Dean. In the dream, he and Dean had been on a road trip, not hunting but simply _driving_ , the implicit but unspoken knowledge of the dream telling him that they were going to Florida to visit the Salvador Dali museum. Castiel severely doubted that Dean had any interest in fine art, and even if he did, not enough to sit in the Impala with a silent Castiel for nineteen hours, but in the dream, he was at peace. And then Dean had looked at him, and suddenly, he knew. God was coming.)

He didn’t feel his feet carry him downstairs, didn’t feel himself straightening his tie or even see himself when he looked in the mirror to make sure the body he was wearing was presentable – it was surreal. Castiel had never dreamed he would _ever_ meet his father – and yet on this day, in this life, in this world which was not supposed to be, God was here. God walked the Earth, this Earth, and as Castiel opened the door, God smiled.

He dropped to his knees and wept.

* * *

It took some time to collect himself. Only it didn’t, because all progression of this timeline had been halted. Stopping time was a strange thing. He’d done it himself a few times, but in his youth it had been Gabriel who was particularly fond of it – Gabriel had always been the best of all of God’s creations at bending and even breaking the branches of reality. Some say that God had taught him personally. But it’s a strange thing especially to Castiel, who had been without his grace for so long, to see that all that is in the universe simply _be_ for a moment. All was silent. The millions of background sounds constantly buzzing simply weren’t anymore, even the noises that his human ears couldn’t perceive, and he felt suddenly jarred by the utter silence. In response, Chuck, who’d been sitting patiently in an easy chair, waiting for him to get his bearings, stared at the television for a moment before it suddenly turned on, and Johnny Cash was singing the best performance of his career on the screen. It had never been filmed or recorded, not that that was something Castiel knew, but Chuck had been so moved by the performance that he’d given the order to Joshua to allow Cash’s soul into heaven regardless of his sins.

Heaven was such an uncomfortable place. Music, though, was pure. It was beautiful. One of the many things that his creations had created, Gods in their own way. Gods of the arts, sciences, and sometimes even Gods of the strange and otherworldly.

“Castiel. There’s a bottle of rum in the kitchen. I’d like some.”

Castiel nodded and pulled himself to his feet. He’d been rehearsing all the things he would say, all the questions he would ask, and now he found himself an invalid, incapable of doing anything but weeping and staring, but his father just smiled at him, touched his face, kissed his forehead. Stared at him with the sort of love he did _not_ deserve, because to even stand in God’s presence made him holier, brought back many of the eons of memories he’d been fighting to recover in the past six weeks, and to be touched by Him? It was unimagineable to love someone so much. Castiel’s whole being vibrated with that love, so immense and magnificent it could almost be mistaken for his grace, and he wandered into the kitchen, hands shaking as he poured two glasses, all the blood and death and guilt weighing down his soul as the memories of all of his transgressions came to light. His knees almost buckled at the sheer immensity of it all.

Chuck was quietly singing along, desperately off tune, and Castiel wiped his eyes. He was too human to handle doing this, meeting Him, and he couldn’t have ever expected to know what it felt like to be near Him, after all this time. But Chuck had come here for a purpose, and he needed to stay calm, so he took the glasses back into the living room and sat across from him, setting each glass down on a coaster.

“Thank you, Castiel.”

He nodded, picking up his own and taking a swig. Before he’d begun to remember, he’d enjoyed drinking, but he’d not partaken in weeks and the proof on the bottle is fairly high. He feels a little light headed almost immediately, and drains the glass in response, sitting very still and finally looking Chuck in the eye.

 

“Father. I cannot stay here anymore. I need to be returned.”

And then Chuck did the last thing he’d expected. He _laughed._ “Is _that_ what this is about?”

“What- Of course!” He settled down again, trying to remain level headed. It was likely the last time he would ever see Him, and damned if he was going to be remembered as the most petulant of his children. “Father, I’ve done horrible things. I’ve killed angels. Humans. I fell. I need to be restored and returned to the proper reality. I need to fix—“

“Castiel.” The angel fell very silent, only Johnny Cash’s croons filling the room, before his Father spoke again. “Tell me about time.”

“Time…?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly he was reminded of primary school in Destiny. He pursed his lips. “Gabriel taught me about it. He said that reality was like a massive tree.” He gestured with his hands as he spoke, trying not to sound foolish, but feeling foolish even still. “That… reality as most understand it is the trunk of the tree. It moves only forward, in this metaphor, upward. It is the way things are. But that the tree has millions of branches, and the branches have branches growing from them, and those branches are covered in twigs and leaves, and that all of those branches are the possible futures and alternate realities that exist. And that while the main trunk of the tree is too structurally sound to alter, the branches can be bent, or even grown.”

“That’s a fair way to explain it, yes.”

“But what does that have to do with anything…?”

“It has to do with everything, Castiel. If you assume that reality is the trunk, what about all of those branches, leaves, and twigs? What about all of the lives caught up in those possible futures?”

He blinked and shook his head. “I don’t know, Father. I suppose… I never thought about it.”

Chuck laughed. “Yes. People are so caught up in the trunk, you know. After all, it’s the trunk that is written about in prophecy, not the branches. But a tree with no branches, leaves, and twigs is not beautiful. It towers, strong, but it cannot be climbed. It cannot be enjoyed. It will inevitably be cut down, harvested for its lumber, or perhaps turned into paper.” He paused, and for a moment Castiel thought it was for dramatic effect, but then he realized it was because Chuck was staring intently at the screen, the climax of the song clearly moving him in a way that Castiel suddenly, intensely understood. “Those branches matter. All of those souls caught up in possible realities, alternate realities, they _matter_ , Castiel. And one day, when they die, they will ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell. The nature of things is infinitely larger than even someone as all seeing as you can understand.”

“But _why_ , Father? Why would you put me here? If it is punishment, I will stay here forever. I will stay here as long as you like. I will do _anything_ , I just… need to understand.”

The love in Chuck’s eyes dragged from Johnny Cash’s wrinkled, heartbroken face to Castiel’s, and again, he felt overwhelmed. He felt undeserving. But the love was _there_ , it was so real, it was so forgiving and he felt his eyes begin to weigh down as his tear ducts were once again stimulated, but he held it back. He could not keep weeping. “Castiel, why don’t you fetch us a couple more drinks. I’ll answer your questions.”

So he did. He poured Chuck another glass of rum, and for himself, after some digging in Dean’s freezer, a glass of vodka and orange juice. His Father smiled in appreciation as he sat the drinks down, attention once again focused on the concert, and Castiel found himself watching too. It was peaceful. Cash had begun singing his eventually-famous cover of _Hurt_ , strumming the guitar with arthritic fingers and anguish evident in his face, and they simply watched. Castiel had never cared much for this type of music, but if his Father enjoyed it, perhaps he’d take more time to examine it. Perhaps, after his Father restored his grace, he’d travel back to this particular show and observe. Or maybe he’d return to Heaven, after his penance was done – maybe this was someone’s Heaven. Maybe this was God’s Heaven. Or maybe this existed only once, in one reality, far far away from this one, on a night when Johnny Cash had had to switch venues at the last minute to the small, intimate venue on the screen, and his wife had been gone, and he’d been listening to an industrial metal band on the radio on the way there when he realized that this song was _beautiful_ , and he wanted to sing it. And it was on this night that he was a little sick, so his voice reached octaves it had never hit before, and the acoustics in that tiny venue he’d never play again were _perfect_ , and with all of these combined factors, it was, indeed, the best show he’d ever play. Maybe it didn’t exist at all.

The song ended. The crowd cheered.

“You’re here, Castiel, because you and your species have been wronged.”

He turned his head from the screen. Chuck had already drained his second glass of rum, watching him with undeniable _guilt_ in his eyes, and he wanted nothing more to assure his Father that he _hadn’t_ been wronged, and that he was happy and grateful to exist, but the stoniness in Chuck’s face stilled his words. “I created you for a specific purpose, all of you. And you’ve served that purpose well. But a few of you were forced to endure things I’ve asked of no other creature in all of creation. Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Gabriel, and… you. Others have suffered, and I intend to gain their forgiveness as well, but you five are the ones I have betrayed the most. The ones who suffered most. The ones who I forced through more trials than all others. The ones with the most responsibility. The ones who rose the highest and fell the farthest. And I couldn’t ask for your forgiveness because I knew that all of you would forgive me, instantly. Unquestionably.”

Castiel didn’t understand. Chuck must have seen it in his face, because he smiled, staring at his empty glass, which began to fill with rum from the bottom up, bubbling up from nonexistence. Pure creation. So simple a miracle, and yet Castiel was awed by its insignificance. “So I took you. The five of you. No one knows you’re gone. Your whole life in this reality has been but a blink of an eye as far as those living in the trunk, as you say, are concerned.”

“You… took us?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, if it has not been what you wanted. But there is only one gift I could give you, and you could only accept it if you didn’t realize it was a gift. Free will, Castiel, is the point of everything. Creating a race of creatures that had absolute loyalty to me was… it felt right, at first. It didn’t occur to me to create something that would be disloyal – not after the leviathan. But after I reached my hand onto a few planets, created the spark of life that would eventually lead to my finest creations, I began to understand that while angels are necessary, they’re to be pitied. And I pitied you, _all_ of you.”

He was floored, starting at him with wide eyes, and Chuck gestured to the untouched screwdriver sitting on the coaster, beads of perspiration dripping down a glass Mary Winchester had bought at a thrift store over thirty years ago, when she’d first moved into this house. He brought it to his lips and took a drink, the orange juice’s bitter taste startling him a little as it combined unpleasantly with the rum that was already on his tongue, but eventually it claimed all of his tastebuds and repurposed them. It was good. He took another large gulp before setting the drink down, nodding. Chuck resumed speaking.

“I took Michael and Lucifer first. From the cage. Then Gabriel and Raphael, from Death. Then you. I will take the others, one by one, allow them to live out normal lives, human lives. Existing for as long as I have, right and wrong are difficult to distinguish. Most things simply _are_ , Castiel. Even the Apocalypse, the possible destruction of all of humanity, simply was. Good job on that, by the way.” Castiel just stared at him, stony, and the small, awkward smile on Chuck’s face faltered a little. “I totally get not wanting to talk about it, sorry. Anyway. I took you all, one by one, and found you places where you could genuinely make your own choices, and live free from Heaven. None of you exist in the same planes. None of you even have siblings, and you were all _supposed_ to have fathers but I didn’t want to go against another person’s free will to give you a greater quality of life.”

“None of them are here?” Castiel couldn’t help feeling immediately, desperately disappointed. He longed to see his brothers, and if God wouldn’t allow him to return to his old life, he’d been silently hoping that he could find his brothers and be with them. It was where he belonged.

“No.”

“Where are they?”

Chuck smiled, as if at some private joke. “Here and there. You had to be taken to specific timelines, it took quite a bit a bit of planning to figure out where each of you belonged, where you could potentially be happy. For example, if all of you had been taken here, Lucifer would have been a stillborn, Gabriel would have grown up in poverty, and Michael would have killed Raphael. It was all very messy.” He waved his hand dismissively, Castiel looking utterly horrified by that statement.

“Instead, I took Michael to 2042, where he was born into an affluent English family. He married a woman he met while attending Oxford, and while simultaneously developing an oxycontin addiction, became the youngest Prime Minister in history. He had four children, and lived almost a hundred years. The quality of life is very good there, excellent healthcare.”

Castiel cleared his throat a little. “Where did he go?”

Chuck blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“After he died.”

Chuck’s smile faltered. “Back to the Cage. He’s not human, none of you are. When he died, he simply resumed the existence he’d had prior to being human. As will you all. In that life, if Michael had had a soul, it would have gone to Heaven. And it would have been… problematic, for him to exist simultaneously in Heaven and Hell.”

Castiel pondered that for a moment. “Will he remember being human?”

“If he wants to, he can. If he doesn’t, he won’t.”

He nodded once more. “And the others?”

“Lucifer was, unsurprisingly, hard to place. Most possible outcomes of his existence resulted in him dying young – it was as if humanity didn’t suit him in any scenario.” Chuck’s eyes darkened with sadness. “I nearly gave up, I looked in so many places, but, finally, I found him a thousand years in the future. This will probably sound a bit absurd-” Chuck looked at him for a moment. “Or, you know, maybe it won’t. But. He’s the captain of a spaceship called the Nostromo, employed by the US government to find various resources from other planets. Think Alien but without the super aggressive Geiger monsters. He began working there when he was 18, and spent almost all of his life in space, until he was forced to retire at 120.” At Castiel’s face, he shrugged. “The quality of life will only continue to improve so long as your species pursues something better. At 140, he died, and was returned to the cage. He never married, never remembered, and as far as I know, never picked up a bible in his life. But he did have a girlfriend on the Nostromo who travelled with him, and he was happy.”

“Gabriel loved Earth as an angel, and thus for opposite reasons than Lucifer, it was hard to place him too. His grace shined everywhere, and he seemed equally content to be dropped into a starving, impoverished life as he was a privileged one. However, I found him a decent life in 2001, to a middle class family in California. He went to the University of Nevada in Las Vegas for his undergrad and never left.” Castiel laughed a little at that as he finished his third drink. That sounded like Gabriel. “Eventually, he became the manager of the Bellagio. You know, the casino with the large fountain out front?” The TV abruptly changed to a scene from a documentary about Vegas filed thirty years from then, showing the hotel’s famous, illuminated fountain sending phallic jets of water shooting into the night sky. “It’s famous for being… decadent. Gabriel has a cocaine problem, but apart from that, he is _very_ content. Apart from you, he’s the only one I’ve visited.”

Castiel blinked in surprise. “Was he remembering things as well?”

“No, no! Not at all. He’s just fun to drink with.”

He had no idea how to respond to that.

“Raphael was more content in the past than the future. He was sent to France, born in 1901, and after surviving the First World War, spent most of World War II helping Jews escape into Spain. Eventually, he was betrayed, and executed by a firing squad. He was survived by his wife and children, who escaped prior to his arrest.”

Castiel let it all sink in. He felt awed. Michael had become the youngest Prime Minister in English history. Lucifer, a lonely space traveler, working for the government finding oil or whatever the world survived on in his time. Gabriel, a pioneer of industry and the owner of one of the most profitable casinos in the country. Raphael, a war hero who fought on the side of human life. He suddenly felt so insignificant. What had he done? Grown up in a small town and gone to art school, presumably to do nothing with his degree because no one ever does _anything_ with art degrees. The human, insecure part of him flushed with shame, but the angel looked up at his Father, always needing more.

“And me?”

Chuck smiled widely. “Yes. And you. You were strange, Castiel. Your grace shined only in worlds where Dean Winchester was alive and _mostly_ what he was when you knew him. Small changes could be allowed, but it wasn’t as if I could just create a reality and put Dean in it, as a banker or a college student or a soldier. He had to be as close to the Dean you knew as possible – a hunter with a brother named Sam Winchester, an alcohol problem, and a black 1967 Chevy Impala.” Chuck frowned then, looking at his child. “It was hard, finding a reality where Dean was the one you knew but without a possibility of Apocalypse. Only one reality existed that way, and it took some alterations to make it such. I had hoped you would be happy here, but this meeting proves you’ve not been. I’m sorry.”

The weight of those words sat on his back, not unlike the weight of his wings or the weight of his guilt, and his eyes slid to the floor in shame as he drained his screwdriver. By the time he sat it down, it was refilled, just as it had been before, and the miracle is less impressive now with his heart so heavy. Chuck frowned, leaning forward and placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Why have I been remembering?”

“You know why, Castiel. These last few weeks, all that research you’ve been doing to jog your memories? Being in Lawrence, being with the Winchesters, did the same thing. It compromised the structural integrity of the wall until it finally crumbled. I apologize again, I can imagine that was unpleasant.”

“I forgive you, Father.”

“I know you do. Only one angel in existence is incapable of forgiving me. And if I asked for it, he still probably would.”

They lapsed into silence again, Castiel sipping his drink, Chuck sipping his, and the concert once again back on the TV. He wasn’t watching it this time, simply taking the moment to think about everything his Father had said, but never taking his eyes off of him for fear that if he did, when he looked back, Chuck would be gone. But even when his body blinked, even when he momentarily forgot and his eyes cast elsewhere, his Father never left. His heart again swelled with love, with pride, even if the weight of all of his sins squeezed it unbearably.

“What was supposed to be the outcome of my life, Father?”

Chuck smiled. “I don’t know. It’s still happening.”

That answer was extremely unsatisfying. He supposed this was how Dean felt every time Castiel had given him cryptic answers in their time working together. But they sat there like that for a while, drinking, Castiel occasionally asking questions and Chuck usually answering them. Most of the questions were about his brothers – he found the idea of them leading their own lives endlessly fascinating, Lucifer’s in particular because it sounded less like reality and more like a science fiction novel. But he was troubled too. He was the only one who had broken the wall, a wall _God_ had made for him. He was the only one who needed the presence of those he’d known in his other life. He was the only one not destined for grandeur, which didn’t so much bother him as it did bewilder him. Were the others simply more strong willed? More independent? Where they, like Anna, simply _better_?

“Castiel.” The concert seemed infinite. Perhaps it truly wasn’t real; they’d been talking for hours and hours, and yet Cash just kept singing, occasionally playing the same song over again as the crowd screamed in delight. “You came to ask me to return you to your life as an angel. I will do that, if that is what you want. I gave you free will, and I will not deny you the _choice_ to give it up. But I must insist you think about it. This life you have here will be good. I can restore your wall, make it a better one. Return you to a time before you interacted with that ghost. You can stay with Dean Winchester and finish school. You can live normally.”

“Will I remember being here? Meeting you?”

Chuck’s eyes darkened and he shook his head, draining his glass. Once it hit the coaster, it was full again, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, the drink a little sticky in his facial hair. “No. If you return to your human life, you will have no memory of being an angel. No memory of meeting me. When you die, if you choose to, you can remember your life as a human, and take what you’ve learned when making decisions as a soldier of Heaven. But it would be impossible to live with true free will knowing that I exist, and that I gave you this life.”

The thought was devastating. Castiel had waited millions of years to meet his Father, and this was the happiest day of his entire existence. This was better than every memory he’d ever had or _will_ ever have. “And if I go back to the… to the trunk. Will I remember this?”

“Yes. I suppose. But. I need you to really think about your choice, Castiel. Because, as much as you’ve wanted to meet me, in a way, you already have. You’ve met me many times. But you will never, _ever_ have this opportunity again.”

He nodded.

“Go upstairs. Take some time. When you’ve made your decision, pray to me.”

“Yes, Father.”

And before he could say _I love you_ , Chuck was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sobs i've been waiting to write this chapter the whole fic i'm so happy about this. only one left! please leave me some feedback I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED. this fic has been my baby and has been getting me through a pretty shitty summer. so for the few who've been reading it, thank you thank you so much (:


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter earns the story's Explicit rating. FAIR WARNING.

It was a cheap writer’s trope, leaving the reader in question for a happy ending and then resolving it with an epilogue. Chuck knew that, but he also knew that frankly, he wasn’t that great of a writer. Writing was _hard_. Nobody was ever satisfied. The problem with unhappy endings is that a story is a _story_ , and it should be aware of itself as such – life was unhappy, but a story didn’t have to be. It had the virtue of ending prior to one’s death (unlike life), or even continuing afterwards, and with that virtue a story could end and leave the reader feeling comfortable, hopeful even. That at least, if their lives were poorly constructed and out of control, the lives of the characters remained eternal, and when the last words were _and they lived happily ever after_ , it was truth. Those characters really did live happily ever after, in the minds and hearts of those who experienced them.

But people were hard to satisfy nowadays. They used words like _unrealistic, improbable,_ and _contrived_ came up in reviews whenever writers had the good sense to give a character a decent ending. People wanted fiction to reflect reality, and what was the point in that? Was everyone really so cynical? Had all of his creations been hurt so much, so desperately in their lives that the idea of others having it better was nothing less than infuriating? Chuck didn’t understand. The story was one of the greatest things to come out of the Spark, a way for his creations to become creators. But a story, despite its lack of realism, could only leave a bad taste in one’s mouth if it ended on a sour note.

No one wanted to cry, not really. No one wanted to clutch their chest and weep for those characters that they’d grown to love, to admire, characters whom they’d fought with, as omniscient observers who were powerless to change anything, but desperate for it all to turn out right. Nobody _actually_ liked character death, even if it’s the only rational way for a story to end, because losing a character you’re invested in can be as heartbreaking as losing someone you love in life. Nobody actually wanted to feel that loss. But people were _proud_ nowadays. A story was weak and underdeveloped if it ended well. Characters were shallow and pedantic if they expressed more joy than sorrow. Nobody was happy to be _happy_ , but he supposed that was the nature of things.

Endings were hard. You just couldn’t please anyone.

* * *

Epilogue

Slightly Less than One Year Later

* * *

August was an uncomfortable month. Castiel’s skin was covered in sweat, his campus tshirt clinging to his figure and his short hair sticking wetly to the sides of his face, and every now and then a bit of sweat would drip into his eye, and it would burn in that immediate, distracting way that would render him utterly incompetent for a couple of minutes as he tried to rub the salt out. The humidity was almost as high as the temperature, something associated more with the deep south than flat, tepid Kansas, but today it felt like a sauna. So naturally, today was the day he was moving. Perhaps he’d be in a better temperament if this weren’t the third move he’d participated in in as many days, but Dean had asked him to help, and it wasn’t as if he could say _no_. At least this was the last one.

Moving Sam out of the Winchester house had been emotional for everyone involved. They’d rented a uhaul and crammed it full of all of Sam’s most important things before attaching the trailer to the back of the Impala, dropping the car’s gas mileage and speed to a _crawl_ , but both of the Winchester boys seemed completely unable to see reason when it came to one another, and having never had siblings of his own, Castiel couldn’t contest it. They’d piled into the car; Dean in the front, Sam riding shotgun, and Castiel sitting in the backseat like a child, but he didn’t mind. A couple of pillows and blankets turned it into a comfortable, enviable looking nest, and he caught Sam staring at him with jealousy when he _wasn’t_ dozing through that road trip. Which was most of the time – Castiel had spent most of the summer working 40 hour weeks teaching art classes to children, which exhausted him on both a physical and emotional level.

The drive being 27 hours, not accounting for the five or six traffic jams they found themselves stuck in, they broke the trip up into three days. Dean allowed Sam to drive a little bit during each day, but never Castiel, meaning that he drew some variation of the inside of the Impala in his sketchbook probably thirty or forty times before he got bored of drawing, and a little carsick. When Castiel had inquired about this roadtrip ahead of time, Dean had told him they were going to stay in whatever one star joint turned up first, which he found repulsive. Bent on _not_ spending the three day drive scratching bed bug bites or wondering if one could actually get herpes from a toilet seat, Castiel had booked them nice hotel rooms in a couple of choice cities.

If he were to be totally honest with himself, it had been an enjoyable trip. Dean and Sam argued loudly in the front seat for most of the second day, and in the privacy of the hotel rooms Dean fussed about him, motherhenning and asking Castiel imploring questions he couldn’t possibly know the answer to. Questions like _do you think he’s gonna be okay_? Or _what if he doesn’t like California?_ Or _what if his roommate is a total dick?_ Or _what if he gets strung out on Adderall, I heard that’s a problem nerds have_. Castiel had tried to provide adequate advice, and when diplomacy failed, they had the kind of rough, screaming-your-throat-raw sex that would leave him sleeping in the car for most of the next day. The first night, they’d stayed in Denver – Castiel had made Dean drive him out to a dispensary, where he legally purchased enough marijuana and edibles to last him the next six months. The second night, they’d stayed in the Bellagio.

Vegas had been fun. Granted, neither he nor Sam were old enough to gamble, but Dean had a couple of fake IDs for them all the same, and Castiel had smoked almost three and a half grams of Sour Diesel _by himself_. Knowing full well how high he was, Dean just helped him into the suit he’d packed, straightening his tie and giving him eyedrops, and told him to just sit still and not buy any casino credits. Too high to argue, he’d done just that, shadowing the both of them while they robbed Cesare’s Palace nearly _blind_ – Dean had told him that he’d learned from his father not to gamble where you’re staying if you planned on cleaning house, and by the time they stumbled into their suite at four in the morning, deliriously exhausted, in various states of intoxication, and forty thousand dollars richer, Castiel had to agree. Dean knew what he was doing.

Castiel slept completely through the eight hours of remaining drive to Palo Alto. He was still half baked, and Sam had to stop to get sick a couple times, but Dean seemed too distressed about this being the last day with his brother to feel the effects of their late night, and the ten or so shots of whiskey he’d put away. Arriving at Stanford during freshman move-in day looked a lot like his first day at KU, except that Castiel had never had to live in a dorm, so he’d missed out on the experience of hundreds of awkward students carrying boxes while their respective family members cried and didn’t help.

He’d helped Sam move in, until his tshirt had parabolas of sweat soaked from his neck all the way to his lower back, before excusing himself so that Sam and Dean could have their time together to say goodbye. Dean would call him when it was time to go to the hotel, so Castiel had taken Sam’s bike and simply ridden around, exploring the campus and the surrounding areas. Despite all Dean’s concerns, Castiel privately thought that this would be good for Sam. It wasn’t that Sam was too good for KU, or that Sam was more ambitious than Dean – it was just that Sam needed different things, and separating them from their highly codependent relationship would probably do the both of them good. Dean had been raising Sam for far too long, all of them knew that, and he’d been playing too many roles and trying to save too many people. It wasn’t fair for him to have to take that burden.

Over lunch, he’d called his mother, telling her that the trip had gone well and that he’d made it safely to California. Over the past year, she’d grown steadily more accepting of his lifestyle. He’d never outright _told_ her that he and Dean were lovers, and she’d never outright asked, but when she’d finally met Dean for the first time over Thanksgiving, when Castiel had invited he and Sam to Destiny (though Sam had declined – he was going to a girlfriend’s house that year), the two of them had stared at each other with mutual understanding, and that had been that. If she’d been upset at the nature of their relationship, she’d hidden it well, perhaps her distress masked by private joy that Dean had kept him in Kansas for at least another year.

His first semester had ended well. He’d been disappointed that he didn’t have a 4.0, but apparently it was almost impossible for art majors to attain that – each semester, there would always be at least _one_ professor who would boldly inform the class that no one would make an A because an A implied perfection, and there was no perfect art. And since there were only a limited number of professors, it wasn’t as if he could always drop said class – every now and then, he would simply have to settle. But despite his one B, he’d been happy with it, and happier again when the next semester, his grades had been just as good, and his portfolio strong enough to receive an additional scholarship for the next year. Not that he had rent to worry about anymore.

It had been a good year. Even with that rash of murders at the beginning of the semester, which had been disturbing enough for him to almost drop out and resume school again the next semester, somewhere far away where psychopaths _didn’t_ think it was socially acceptable to pick off students, Sam and Dean had taken care of it. They were strictly on a need-to-know basis with this sort of stuff, but Castiel had his ideas about what they did with their off time, and Dean let him have his ideas, but never confirmed or denied anything. It wasn’t ideal, but really, what was?

Dean called him fairly late and picked him up at the library, where Castiel had been people watching, and the Impala moving quite a bit faster now that all of Sam’s things were no longer weighing down the Uhaul trailer. After a trip to the hotel, a couple of showers, and a change of clothes, they met up at a nice restaurant for dinner on Sam’s insistence. Castiel had never been by the ocean before, so after their meal they’d driven to a beach, and he felt vaguely reminded of something from a long, _long_ time ago as he dug his toes into the sand and watched the water. Incredibly, he’d managed to forget to pack swimtrunks, but it ended up not mattering anyway – Dean seemed less than impressed with the ocean and hadn’t wanted to stick around.

Driving back from Palo Alto had been less enjoyable than the trip there – Dean was depressed and Not Talking About It, and Castiel wasn’t going to push it. He took hits off a vaporizer pen to make the drive go by faster, falling into Dean’s Led Zeppelin tapes and occasionally talking with him about whatever Dean wanted to discuss. Mostly unimportant things. Stories from Castiel’s job were endlessly hilarious to him – his kids (which was how he referred to the groups of twenty or so students he got once a month for Art Camp) were hyperactive, messy, and obnoxious, and had an impressive talent for injuring Castiel in the line of duty. A particularly moody child had to be expelled from the camp after he’d stabbed Castiel in the lower leg with a woodcarving tool, and after that, he’d abandoned the idea of teaching anything that didn’t involve safe, soft materials. They didn’t stop in Vegas on the drive back, breaking the trip up into two long days and spending the night in Salt Lake City, and he fucked the bad mood out of Dean before they collapsed into an uneasy sleep in the hotel bed.

Coming home hadn’t been particularly relaxing either – he’d had one last _very_ exhausting week of work before Art Camp officially drew to a close for the summer, and then it was time to move again. His lease finally up, he spent two days packing up everything he had until the apartment was stripped bare, and once it had all been piled up into the back of his rental truck, then he’d had to _clean_. Getting his security deposit back meant leaving the place in a better condition than when he’d moved in, and the guest bedroom he’d been using as a studio was completely destroyed.

Dean, at least, had been helpful through all of it.

“Babe!”

Castiel wedged the plastic wrapped mattress against the garage’s wall, wiping the sweat off his forehead and squinting at Dean, who looked equally sweaty and whose chest was heaving as carried three massive boxes into the garage, dumping it on top of his mother’s old washer that had died on them ten years ago. “What?”

“I’m taking a break. You want a beer?”

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll be in the living room.”

Moving in to the Winchester house had almost been as dramatic as Sam moving _out_. There were three bedrooms – Sam’s, which was remaining undisturbed so he’d have somewhere to sleep during his summer and winter breaks – Dean’s, and the master bedroom. Dean’s bedroom was barely big enough for him, virtually unchanged since he was little and not much besides a bed, a closet, and a dresser, and although Castiel liked to think he and his things didn’t occupy that much space, Dean’s bedroom wouldn’t fit the both of them. It had been a major point of contention, although Sam and Dean had fought about it far more than he and Dean had, but eventually, his boyfriend had conceded that they’d have to move into the master. Which meant _disturbing_ the master, something neither Sam nor Dean had done since their father died.

Castiel had left him alone to do most of that, jogging upstairs to lug down whatever Dean wanted him to put in the garage. Most of Dean’s old bedroom, including the twin bed, his dresser, and quite a few of his old things were going into storage, and while Castiel was hardly _weak_ , the work was difficult and exhausting. Not to mention the damn _heat_. Still, he was happy to do it – Dean had never been truly alone before, and Castiel practically lived with him anyway. Once the momentum of their relationship had finally hit a comfortable speed, he spent at least a few nights a week at the Winchester home, and Dean spent at least a few nights a week in his tiny apartment. It only made sense for them to do this, but that didn’t mean that it was easy, or comfortable.

The living room was in disarray. Castiel had brought some furniture with him, and while he’d sold or given away most of the thrift store junk he’d gotten a year before, some of his pieces were nearly new, and had been given places in the house. Consequently, it meant that quite a bit of the main floor would have to be rearranged, but for now his additions to the room sat awkwardly in its dead center. Dean was drinking a beer on the new loveseat, and Castiel sat across from him, popping the cap off a black bottle of Guinness and watching him with a small smile.

He loved him then. Maybe he loved him always.

“How’s the garage coming?" 

“Slowly. I don’t believe I can get your bedframe down the stairs by myself.”

“That’s okay, Cas. I’ll help you after this.”

“How’s the bedroom coming?”

“Good. It just… feels weird, you know? It was always his. He had things his way, and every time I go to move something, I keep expecting him to show up and tell me to get out of his room.”

Castiel nodded. He couldn’t truly _understand_ , because he’d never lost anyone. His father, while absent, was still alive. His mother was healthy, finally dating a new man of her own. He had aunts and uncles of course, but he’d never been terribly close with any of them, or his cousins. He couldn’t understand, but he could imagine, but Dean was strong and finally putting some of this to rest would help him move on. After all, leaving his father’s room like that, a monument to all that he was the day he died, was not unlike reading a book and stopping just short of the ending. An affair half finished. All things were supposed to come to an end, even if the ending hurt. Even if it meant that those who had to carry on had to suffer.

“I found all these old photos of Mom. Under his bed. I’d never seen any of them, I don’t think Sammy has either. I even found one of when she was in high school. She was so pretty, Cas.”

“Do you miss her?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“I suppose I do.”

Dean finished his beer, setting the empty bottle back down on the coffee table and wiping his mouth. “Bedframe?”

“Yes.”

Dean helped him move a couple of large pieces into the garage before disappearing into the Master again. Castiel wasn’t quite ready to call it _their room_ just yet, especially since he’d only been inside once, when he and Dean moved the master bed to a different wall. It had been Sam’s idea to completely change it, and after a few carefully chosen words and plenty of jabs at Dean’s sentimentality, Dean had finally agreed. If the bed remained in the same place, it was his parent’s room, only with all of his and Castiel’s things in it. But with everything moved around, that made it different, on a subconscious level. Castiel wasn’t sure if that was actually working, but if it made Dean feel better, then it was worth it.

He spent the day keeping busy, muscles aching from exertion as he organized things. Out of Dean’s bedroom, only a few choice items and his clothes were being moved into the master; everything else, Castiel carried down into storage. Afterwards, he made a half dozen trips carrying everything in boxes labeled ART into the newly empty bedroom, dumping it unceremoniously on the floor and leaving all the boxes labeled CLOTHES next to the master door.

He organized the living room last. The sun had finally set around 9:30, and his body was shaking from not eating almost all day – he’d never stopped for lunch, only alternating between bottles of water and beer on breaks, and maybe at one point he inhaled a handful of stale chexmix. He jogged upstairs, ignoring the tightening in his abdomen as his stomach growled for food, knocking loudly on the door of the master without opening it. “Dean. I’m going to take a shower and get dinner. Would you like to join me?”

The door swung open, and Castiel blinked in surprise – the bedroom looked different. No, it looked… it wasn’t as if he expected that Dean wouldn’t be able to go through with it, packing away the memory of his father and putting it into storage with everything else- no, that wasn’t true. He hadn’t expected it. On some level, when the door opened, he’d expected to see that same monument to John Winchester, and underneath that, John’s monument to his wife. But the room looked completely different. The bed was now facing a different wall, brand new sheets and bed clothes giving it an entirely different appearance, and matching curtains hung from the windows, pulled open so the sunset was visible. The closet was open, Dean having been in the middle of unpacking their clothes into it, and where it had been once filled with aged clothes of John and Mary Winchester, it was now filled with familiar flannel shirts and pressed oxfords. One of Castiel’s paintings, a 5 by 5 foot square scene of several nude Greek goddesses bathing in a river, hung on the wall, and it was slightly crooked but with its addition, he felt a weight of ownership. This was his room. His and Dean’s.

“That sounds good, Cas. You wanna shower first?”

“There’s more than one bathroom in this house, Dean.”

“Let me rephrase that. You wanna shower together?”

His lips quirked into a small smile. “Yes, Dean.”

* * *

Dinner ended up being Indian takeout. The house was organized, but not clean – bubblewrap and newspaper littered the floors, the wineboxes he’d packed his things in were scattered everywhere, and they’d managed to kick up quite a bit of dust moving furniture around. They sat on the floor, legs crossed on the carpet and little plastic tubs of food surrounding them, and Castiel was packing a bowl while Dean sipped on a beer, and it was good. Everything was good, not _great_ , but good. He smoked, and Dean drank, and they put a movie on Netflix but neither of them really watched it. They just talked. School would start in a few days, and Dean was entering the final stretch of his degree, and soon he’d be starting his restoration career, fixing up classic cars and living the life he wanted to live.

They kissed, spicy and high and still freshly clean from the shower, and it was scratchy from not shaving and soft because their lips were a bit numb from the food, and Castiel was happy. Not brimming with it – not swollen with joy that moved him to tears, not smiling from ear to ear and wanting to tell anyone who would listen just how happy he was. It wasn’t like that. But he was happy, and in love, and Dean’s hair felt nice under his fingers, Dean’s freckles especially dark under the glow of the sunset, and his eyes would have been bright if they’d been open, but they weren’t. They had fallen closed, lazy and content, and in the background of their movie, Johnny Cash crooned for his lost lover.

Dean put away the leftovers. Castiel finished smoking his bowl, a comfortable high swimming through his nerves, softening his aches and lessening the outside world into a dull roar that was easy to ignore, everything except Dean.

“You okay, Cas?”

He looked over at him, a small smile fixed on his face. “Yes, Dean.”

“You there, buddy?”

“Far away from here, perhaps, but always with you.”

“I dunno what that means.”

“But you do.” Castiel beckoned him over with a finger, and Dean gave him an indulgent look, joining him on the floor again and wrapping an arm loosely around his shoulders, gaze mostly on the movie.

“Not even a little bit, Cas, but it’s no skin off my teeth.”

He picked up the remote, staring at it blankly for a moment, all of the buttons appearing to have no writing on them, no indication as to their purpose. But the red one represented the power, so he turned it off, turning around and kissing Dean long and low, like it was everything, because it was. It was creation, inspiration, sacrifice, blood. It was a thousand lifetimes of suffering, a thousand realities of loss, millions of decisions and all of their consequences. It was life after life after life. It was God’s own will, and Castiel didn’t have to know that because it was _his_ will, and really, wasn’t that the point of it all?

He didn’t remember getting upstairs. He’d been kissing Dean, closing his eyes and enjoying it, then he was upstairs, doing the same thing, only he was on top of him in their bed, slowly grinding their hips together and holding him still by the shoulders.

The first time they’d had sex, Castiel had been shitfaced and couldn’t cum. He’d been arguing with himself for weeks about the whole _no sex_ thing, because it wasn’t as if he could save himself for marriage when gay marriage was illegal. The other part of him reasoned that a marriage wasn’t a legal issue at all, that it was a union in the eyes of God, a promise to share and cherish each other forever, but in the end it hadn’t mattered, because he’d gotten _extremely_ fucked up at a party and all of his inhibitions disappeared. He’d dragged Dean upstairs and rode his cock for 45 minutes until Dean got off, then fucked him for another _two_ _hours_ , desperate to get off, but it wasn’t happening. Eventually, he pulled out and gave up, exhausted from the exertion and penis somewhat chafed, griping jealously for a few minutes before passing out. Apparently, Dean Winchester didn’t _get_ whiskey dick, because Castiel plowed him so hard and so much that he came three times and seemed completely ready for a forth when Cas had finally relented.

The second time they’d had sex, he’d been weed-high, but Castiel was _typically_ weed-high and Marijuana seemed to have no effect on his sexual organs. It was a couple of weeks after he’d lost his virginity, an awkward memory he’d not spoken of and Dean had had the good sense to not bring up, after he’d mentally argued with himself as to whether or not he was obligated as a Christian to try and be a born-again Virgin. Eventually, he decided it wasn’t worth it, and one thing just led to another. He’d fucked Dean slow, legs thrown over his shoulders and kissing him deep and reverent, treating him so gently and preciously that one could hardly call it fucking at all. _Love making_ was more accurate, and this was the memory Castiel typically chose when referring to the loss of his virginity. After eating dinner and smoking a joint together, they went for a second round, and Castiel fucked him so hard and held onto him so tightly that he left a bruise the size of his _entire hand_ on the back of Dean’s neck.

The third time they’d had sex, he was completely sober. In light of that, they’d had to take an exceptionally long time preparing him, Dean seeming to delight in fingering him and watching him squirm and pant, chest heaving and cock leaking messily onto his abdomen, and when Dean finally penetrated him, it really hadn’t hurt at all. Burned, perhaps, a slow sensation that touched something strange and deep and ecstatic, but the lack of control had been frustrating and eventually he’d forced Dean onto his back and ridden his cock as hard and fast as he could. Since then, he could ride him so much better, having learned what he liked and developed the muscles in his thighs and hips that made it easier, but the orgasm he’d had from this experience had been so utterly _incredible_ that it remained the memory he turned to when he touched himself.

“Cas.”

Dean was mumbling against his lips – might have been doing it for a while, just like he might have been grinding up to meet him, hard in his jeans and gripping his narrow hips, for a while – and the word went straight to his groin, cock twitching in his baggy sweatpants. He hummed, kissing him soundly, cracking open an eye and meeting Dean’s, which were half open and watching him contentedly. “Dean?”

He felt a hand snake around to grope his backside, his boyfriend letting out a breathy laugh and kissing his cheek. “Nothing.”

Castiel sat up, pulling off his shirt, the air from the rotating ceiling fan seeming to swim around his limbs, like the air was circulating around him and him alone, which he recognized as a High Thought. Dean made fun of him mercilessly whenever he vocalized these thoughts, like the time he’d been completely convinced of the delicate relationship between the Earth and the millions of swarms of insects that populated it, so he said nothing further, simply enjoying the sensation the same way he enjoyed being touched. Dean was yanking his shirt off too, a little faster since he was mostly sober, and then there were lips on his neck and his hips were moving of their own accord, grinding onto Dean’s covered and hardening cock with surprising dexterity.

But then Dean rolled them over, and the new comforter was wonderfully soft against his back, even moreso against his pliable thighs as Dean helped him out of his sweatpants, and it was all so good. He was so high, and Dean was so hot and the sheets were so soft and the house smelled of pipe tobacco and dust, and he tasted a bit of curry in Dean’s mouth sometimes, a bit of beer too, but mostly it was just Dean. Dean’s body was settling between his legs, his hands prying him apart in a way that wasn’t completely literal, right hand wrapping around the base of his cock and tightly pulling up and his left hand groping his thigh, feeling him up, and Castiel let out a deep, guttural noise of appreciation before yanking him down into another kiss.

“Dean…”

He felt him smile against his mouth, maybe smirk, and Castiel reached between them and groped for Dean’s front, his cock hard and tenting his Levi’s, and _mm_ , it was good. “Dean, I don’t know where the lubricant is.”

“I got it baby, don’t worry.”

“And the-?”

“Got those too. Couldn’t exactly risk losing all that stuff in the move.”

Castiel let out a breathy laugh, nodding and propping himself up on one of his elbows for better stability as he jerked Dean off slowly, trying not to lose himself too fast, but Dean was already sinking between his legs, peppering kisses and bites onto his inner thighs. A box had materialized onto the bed with them – one he recognized as the Tupperware box Dean kept all of his unmentionables in. A few months ago, Dean confessed to him that Sam had once found it, and had spent the following week unable to look him in the eye, while Dean obliviously complained about how moody his little brother was being. He laughed out loud at the memory, earning a very bewildered and slightly miffed expression from Dean, whose mouth was barely a couple inches away from his cock, but Castiel just gave him an apologetic sort of sigh, running his fingers through Dean’s short hair reverently.

“I don’t remember you getting that out.” His glazed eyes indicated the box, and Dean let out a soft laugh in return, the hot breath against his thigh causing his cock to twitch with interest.

“You were doing your thing.”

“My thing?”

“Writhing in ecstacy, screaming my name to the heavens, cursing God for every moment we’ve not been together, losing yourself in my eyes. The whole bit.”

He laughed again. “I did no such thing.”

“You will.”

At that, Dean placed a firm kiss at the base of his cock, and Castiel’s head tipped back, hips twitching and blood pounding in his ears, and it wasn’t until he felt the press of latex everywhere but where he wanted to be touched that he realized what Dean was going to do. He spread his legs wide as Dean yanked him up by his hips, ass almost completely in the air and his cock hanging fat and ignored against his belly, and Dean dipped his tongue onto his entrance, holding the dental dam in place with his left hand and his right wrapping around his own cock. Castiel’s toes curled, the sensation always halfway between being jarring and _desperately_ erotic every time Dean did this, and he slid his legs over Dean’s shoulders, the pads of his feet pawing at his back and the little gasp that had built in his throat coming out almost like a scream.

He could feel Dean smile against him _there_ , and his cock twitched hard in response, the faint and foreign stimulation of Dean’s latex wrapped tongue pressing into him in an aggressive little jab, and _fuck_ he nearly came right then. (This was exactly what he’d meant when he said he _didn’t_ want to cum too fast.) His eyes snapped open, focus abruptly turned from the physical sensation of it to all the lewd sounds Dean was making, the lapping of his tongue and the soft slap of his skin as he jerked himself off, and his eyes rolled back, gasping (“Haaa..!”) loudly, unabashedly, pulling himself open for Dean so completely, the way he always did. As if he was completely unaware of how filthy he looked and sounded, but that was a joke. Castiel knew. The joke, indeed, was making Dean _think_ he didn’t know, when in reality, he was a whore in a God-fearing Christian’s clothing.

Dean kept twisting his tongue against him, dipping it inside to fuck him in harsh, aggressive little movements or just tracing letters flat against him, and he could feel himself tightening up, thighs twitching and the wings of his high pulling him up even higher, and suddenly he was _there_.

“Dean! Please stop or I’m going to orgasm prematurely!”

And then the mouth was gone, the dental dam too, Castiel’s lower body twitching violently as he sat on the precipice of everything, hardly seeing anything at all, when Dean shoved a finger wet with cold lubricant into him with no warning at all. He bucked forward, eyes going wide, and if one were to compare orgasm to leaping off a cliff and flying, this was _falling_ , crashing down at ten thousand miles an hour. The noise he made didn’t express his gratitude – he didn’t want to cum yet, just like he didn’t want Dean to jerk off while he ate him out. He wanted to cum while being fucked, cum _screaming_ like Dean promised, tearing shreds into his back and meeting his thrusts all wild and filthy and desperate – but one couldn’t tell that was what he wanted, because the noise he made was rather like a frustrated whine.

Dean smiled and kissed the head of his cock firmly, just once. “You’re a wreck tonight, babe. Look at you.”

“Just hurry up, please.”

“Turn over.”

Castiel’s could hardly feel his legs as he slid them off of Dean’s shoulders, the weightlessness so similar to a post-orgasm sensation that he briefly wondered if he’d ruined his orgasm, coming so close like that – but he’d only done that once, and he was fairly certain this wasn’t it. He rolled over onto his stomach, laying completely still for a moment and just _feeling_ , enjoying the way the soft fabric felt against his face, before he pulled himself up onto his hands and knees, looking back at Dean with dilated eyes, blasted wide and completely black with desire. He still hadn’t figured out if he liked sex more or less when he was high, but it certainly had its upsides. Nothing ever felt too warm, or hurt too much, and he could find himself utterly lost in tiny sensations, reveling in their beauty and taking those little pleasures into himself with complete sincerity. But sobriety meant he felt more, remembered more, _experienced_ more – really saw Dean for what he was, felt him for what he was; yet no matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t come to a verdict.

Sex with Dean was always good. Even now, when he was messing with him on purpose, crooking his middle finger against his prostate and winding him up into ecstasy before yanking him right back down. He felt himself panting, wondering vaguely if he was being as loud as he thought, hips occasionally snapping back onto him to prolong the pleasure that rippled through his abdomen, sparked into his cock.

“ _Dean_.” It came out a growl, voice lower than seemed possible, and when he glanced behind him, Dean’s _want_ practically inhabited the room with them, a second entity all in its own. He shivered, skin crawling and as he wetted his dry lips, and while Dean said nothing, he pressed his index finger alongside his middle, both of them pressing into the swelling bump of his prostate _hard_ , and Castiel let out a choked noise, sinking down into his pleasure. He likened it to being submerged in hot wax (and some part of him knew that that too was a High Thought), but it truly felt like his whole body was being dragged by his ankle into this, into heat and need and desire while it hardened around him, freezing him in place and starving him for air, and for a moment he could really, _genuinely_ feel it all before he back in bed again, with Dean. His bed, _their_ bed, in _their_ room, and while this would always be the Winchester house, it was his too. His home.

Dean was scissoring his fingers, splicing him apart and stretching him as wide as he could, and Castiel just fell into it, experiencing it for what it was and exhaling sharp little breaths whenever he was pushed farther than he expected. But when he was high, there rarely was _too far_ – his pain tolerance shot through the roof, and Dean knew that. It was the probably the reason he was already – or _finally_ – tearing open a condom, tossing the wrapper on the floor and rolling it over his erection, mouthing kisses over the back of Castiel’s thighs, then the back of his neck, and he arched against him, rocking his hips eagerly in a way that Dean might have made a jab at him for if they both weren’t so incomprehensibly _there_.

He felt the bed shift as Dean sat up on his knees, gripping his cock and pressing it against him, and Castiel went very, _very_ still as the first half inch or so breeched him. There had been times when Dean had gotten him so worked up, so lubricated, and so desperately ready that penetration hadn’t hurt at all, not even a burn. There had been times where there’d barely been any preparation, and by the time Dean was cumming, Castiel was only just getting adjusted to it, eyes wrenched in discomfort as Dean plowed into him, but of course he didn’t complain. It wasn’t in his nature to do so. This rested in the natural middle, his body burning as it stretched to accommodate him, and he pressed his lips together, taking him quietly and rotating his hips slowly once Dean had seated himself completely inside.

“You okay, Cas?”

He always asked, even when they did it rough. Castiel almost _never_ asked when he was on top, mostly because he trusted Dean to inform him if he was not okay. “Yes.”

And that was all it took. Dean’s hands reached for his shoulders, slowly caressing down his sides before they finally settled at his hips, and Castiel registered the painful drag of him pulling almost all the way out before he was slamming in again, his body thick and ever resisting. Above him, Dean let out an appreciative noise, fingers squeezing little barely-there bruises as he held him still, when suddenly Castiel was struck with the strangest sensation of dejavu. Just a flash, and then it was gone, and he might have mentioned it, might have pondered it if he weren’t underneath him, shaking and being dragged back and forth from the precipice of his orgasm. (But he could have _sworn_ -)

Dean snapped his hips forward, arching deep and hard and grazing across his prostate, and whatever thought he’d been having melted away as that deep, strange, guttural pleasure sparked through him, crawling through his abdomen to his cock, which ached to be touched. He gripped the sheets, fist balling them up and tearing the elastic wrap on the mattress off in his ache for something to grab onto, moaning more like a growl and his skin flushed and sweaty, he was so turned on. His hips humped forward in reflex, cock twitching and red and needing stimulation, and Dean let out a breathy laugh, snatching up one of his hands and kissing the back of his palm. “Jesus, Cas, look at you.”

He pulled back and slammed home again, setting a brutal pace, slowly pulling almost all the way out before angling Cas’s hips just right and snapping forward, _hard_ , and it probably wasn’t doing that much for Dean but fuck if it wasn’t _killing_ Castiel. He could hear his blood pounding, the penetration changing his high from a predominantly psychological one to a body high, and suddenly he was aware of _so much_ , he couldn’t help but cry out. He could feel his heart, not in the literal sense of a wet, slow mechanism but something more powerful than that, and it pulsed waves of pleasure from his chest to the rest of his body, synching with Dean’s thrusts, and _oh_ it was amazing. It was like Dean was fucking his soul, not his ass, because he felt it everywhere, as if his very cells were responding to him, and he didn’t know if it was the weed, or Dean, or if there was just something very unusual about him, but the pleasure was unimagineable. Not orgasmic, but something different, old and cosmic that was deep in the recesses of who he was.

“Dean!” His voice came out startlingly low, almost a croak, and he balled his fists into the sheets, that strange body high melting together with all of the pleasure Dean was giving him until it was the same thing, until he was _flying_ , and he’d wanted to say faster, deeper, harder, _more_ but suddenly he couldn’t say anything at all. His tongue was heavy, dry, vocal chords unresponsive, and for a minute he thought he might be cumming, but he wasn’t. Thank God. If he’d had it this way, this would _literally_ never end, and Castiel would spend the rest of his life coasting on this unfathomable sensation, soaring above all that _was_ and all that _could be_. Flying through the space between spaces, on the edges of the multiverse, and before he could finish that thought, Dean’s hands had left his hips and one was snatching his hair, the other wrapping around his cock, and he _sobbed_ , hips snapping back _fast_ to meet him, completely insane with sensation.

(Stop that, Castiel.)

“ _Dean_!” He’s screaming, the hand of God casually reaching into him and patching up the tiniest little wound on a towering wall, a dam twenty feet thick and a hundred miles high, and he’s cumming harder than he’s ever done so in his life, body going rigid on Dean’s cock, hips snapping back to bury him in completely and fuck if it doesn’t go on _forever_ , if that pleasure doesn’t stretch to places he didn’t realize were there.

(Stop scratching at your Grace.)

Dean was groaning out his name, almost shouting when Castiel went rigid around him, when suddenly he was there, his orgasm wrung out of him on Cas’s body, pleasure cresting through him and fuck if Cas wasn’t just _losing it_. He’d never been a screamer but _Christ,_ he was going crazy, like a damn angel on PCP, and Dean could only think about how hot it was as he came, filling the condom as he fucked him through it, riding it out for everything it was and only letting the tight grip on Castiel’s hair go when they were both completely still, panting and hips twitching through the aftershocks. He pulled out as he softened, and Castiel dropped onto his stomach like a rock, breathing hard and whole body shaking, twitching and hypersensitive. He breathed, limbs creaking as he rolled onto his back, giving Dean room to collapse beside him, and as pleasure slowly swam through him, he was overwhelmed with a warm and sincere love that creeped through his being.

He was happy.

* * *

Dean had work the next morning, and was gone by the time Castiel stirred. He was pleasantly sex-sore, a sensation that both of them had grown accustomed to the point where it was hardly worth noting at all, no longer a pain but a pleasant, albeit sometimes stinging reminder of their copulation. After a shower, he fixed himself a heavy breakfast, a lone celebratory meal for having made it this far, and he was reminded briefly of his mornings after church with his mother. Scrambled eggs, toast, biscuits with sausage gravy, and sausage links – more than he could possibly eat, more than he and his mother could ever eat, but maybe he’d bring the leftovers to the autoshop after he ate. It was past noon, probably past Dean’s allotted lunch hour, but he’d been by a few times, and it had never been a problem.

He ended up not going, however, once it really occurred to him the state of the house. There was so much to do, and despite the ache in his muscles, despite the general despair he felt when it truly occurred to him how much more needed to be done, he couldn’t put it off. School resumed in a couple days, and by then he wouldn’t have time, Dean even less so, since he was in his final year of his degree. So he spent most of the day cleaning and reorganizing, throwing away boxes, sweeping floors, vacuuming carpets, and in general doing the sort of domestic work that he hated, but was otherwise decent at. Amelia had been a good mother to him, had taught him to not forget to _dust_ , not to forget to get between the cracks and behind the furniture, and while he was no good at cleaning tile and his cooking left something to be desired, he was okay. She’d done okay.

After he’d tossed out several trashbags worth of garbage and gotten the living room looking decent, he went upstairs to unpack his studio. The room smelled strongly like Dean, and there were little things about it that indicated his inhabitance for so long. The wall, for example, was scorched slightly, from where Dean’s bedframe had been pressed up against it, knocking into it every now and then for years and years. The wooden floors had deep scratches in them – probably something that Mary didn’t let happen while she was still alive, but after she was gone, John had bigger worries than if Dean played with the wrong toys on the carpeted areas of the house versus the wooden ones. On the inside of the closet, he found DW carved into the wall, probably something that had never been discovered by anyone except Dean (and probably Sam) until now. It was the little things that he didn’t want to change.

He opened up a window and unpacked his easels, as well as several half-finished oil paintings that he didn’t want to keep sitting in boxes out of fear that some part of them was still wet, and at this very moment those wet paintings were in the process of ruining each other. In the past semester, his body of work had slowly grown, and while he had a number of still lifes and self-portraits in his portfolio, he’d grown increasingly interested in painting the way the old masters did. No longer did he paint directly, harsh slaps of paint slapped right onto white canvas – instead he built things up in delicate glazes, harnessing light with the techniques of Vermeer in mind. When it came to his subject matter, Castiel found himself less interested in social issues and responses to his own experiences and more interested in the stories of antiquity and biblical sources. He had always been this way, but now he painted with a renewed purpose, as if he really understood what it meant to both be these characters and paint them.

A couple hours later, once he’d worked up a real appetite, he finished the rest of the breakfast he’d made, the house now looking substantially more decorated as he’d hung up some of the paintings he’d done that didn’t utterly repulse him. Most of them involved nude women, which Dean would hardly object to, and Sam would probably have the good sense not to make a Thing out of it whenever he came back. (Artists were notoriously easy to offend, even if Castiel wasn’t.) The living room looked decent, the bedroom remained untouched since this morning, and the studio now looked pleasantly disheveled. Everything was the way he liked it.

Dean came home around five, smelling like cars and all that was associated with them but otherwise in a good mood. He was taking Sam’s absence better now that there was someone else in the house, and when he entered he hollered to announce his presence before jogging upstairs for a shower. Castiel was in the basement, poking around at old Winchester memories, but he allowed himself a private moment of joy at Dean’s return. He found a few things of interest down there – old tapes, for one, _hundreds_ of them. Most of them were Disney films, or cartoons, but a couple of them looked old and distinctly of their family. He didn’t doubt that he could find Dean’s first Christmas, maybe even Sam’s, if he tore the basement apart, but that was a project for another day. It just contented him to know that they were probably down there, like buried treasure.

He was in the living room by the time Dean came down, freshly washed and wearing a damp t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, grinning at him like he’d been waiting to see him all day, and Castiel smiled back. “Welcome home.”

“Hey honey. Dinner on the stove? And where are your heels, I told you to be in a dress and heels whenever I came back. Women these days, with their ideas of self worth and- Ow!”

“Don’t you tire of making housewife jokes?”

“Would it disappoint you if it was kind of a turn-on?”

“Yes.”

“Then yeah, babe, they’re _definitely_ just jokes, and I _totally_ tire of them. You know me.”

“Your idea of a wife is bewildering.”

“Yeah, since you’ve got a big cock and you smoke weed all day? It kinda is.” Dean kissed him all the same, closed mouthed and chaste like a greeting, before taking a seat on one of their squishy couches and leaving Cas just enough room to sit comfortably with him. “Seriously though, I’m starved. What’s on the menu?”

He sat down, and the smell of Dean’s bodywash wafted heavily into his nose. A good smell. “I don’t particularly want to cook, and we need to go grocery shopping if you expect me to _start_. Your kitchen is sorely lacking.”

“No more lacking than yours was.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t _cook_. You’d come over, we’d get high, and then we’d go out somewhere.”

“ _You_ ’ _d_ get high, I’d day-drink.”

“ _We’d_ get high and _you’d_ day drink. _Then_ you wouldn’t let me drive, so you’d be driving intoxicated to wherever we ate.”

Dean nodded sagely. “That sounds like me. You know I don’t get drunk, it’s not like we were in _danger_.”

“You get drunk after you smoke. Synergistic effect and all of that. But no, we were never in danger.”

“The synergistic effect is a myth-”

Castiel barked out a laugh. “ _How_ many Biology classes have you taken? It certainly isn’t.”

“Was kind of hoping you’d just accept that as an answer since you don’t take science classes anymore.”

“I still read, Dean.”

“That you do. SO, back to my original question. Where are we eating?”

Castiel paused, an indulgent smile on his face, Dean’s hand having crept to his knee at some point in their banter. Two men, alone in a house too big for them, a house full of bad memories, but if this was going to be their life together – bitching, flirting, constantly eating out, day drinking, smoking weed, painting Goddesses upstairs while Dean worked on cars outside – Castiel thought it would be nice. And while he couldn’t say if they’d live happily ever after, couldn’t say if he’d even be in Kansas next year, couldn’t say if he was ever going to amount to anything as an artist or even a person, he could say that right here, right _now_ , he was happy. Happy with Dean. And right now, that was all he could ask for.

“Steak.”

“You read my mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end (: To everyone who's read/commented/left kudos, thank you so much for the continued support. This fic was what I poured myself into when I was having a lot of shit go down, and I appreciate anyone who was there cheering me on during that time. This is not going to be my last SPN fic - I'm already working on a retelling of Pulp Fiction, for those interested in Tarantino. I also might write a couple sequels to this, either telling the stories of the archangels in more detail or just more Dean/Cas cutes. If you enjoyed the read, leave me a comment. And again, thanks guys!


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